Towards a national set of ecosystem service indicators

Insights from Germany

authored by

Christian Albert, Aletta Bonn, Benjamin Burkhard, Sabrina Daube, Katharina Dietrich, Barbara Engels, Jakob Frommer, Martin Götzl, Adrienne Grêt-Regamey, Beate Job-Hoben, Thomas Koellner, Stefan Marzelli, Christoph Moning, Felix Müller, Sven Erik Rabe, Irene Ring, Elisabeth Schwaiger, Burkhard Schweppe-Kraft, Henry Wüstemann

Abstract

Target 2, Action 5 of the EU Biodiversity Strategy requests member states "to map and assess ecosystems and their services" (Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services - MAES initiative). The objective of this paper is to present and discuss the preliminary outcomes of the approach taken to define indicators for implementing MAES in Germany. The paper introduces the requirements for using indicators from a perspective of nature conservation policy, in particular the need to discern the demand and supply of ecosystem services, including their potentials, actual and future use, as well as the natural contributions and human inputs to the generation of ecosystem services. An adapted, differentiated, ecosystem services terminology is presented and a first set of indicators is introduced and explained. The paper closes with an estimate of potential benefits of information produced by implementation of a national MAES for various fields of policy (e.g. local and regional landscape planning) and proposes some recommendations for further research and practical exploration.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Environmental Planning

External Organisation(s)

Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ)
Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health
Friedrich Schiller University Jena
Kiel University
Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF)
ifuplan - Institut für Umweltplanung und Raumentwicklung
Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BFN)
ETH Zurich
University of Bayreuth
Technische Universität Berlin
Environment Agency Austria (Umweltbundesamt)
German government environmental agency (UBA)
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig

Type

Article

Journal

Ecological indicators

Volume

61

Pages

38-48

No. of pages

11

ISSN

1470-160X

Publication date

02.2016

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Decision Sciences, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Ecology

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2015.08.050 (Access: Closed)