Rosa Manrique

Humans fulfil an active role, through management and economic activities, in the production of ecosystem services and related benefits. Different human groups may pursue different objectives, and their actions may affect each other's well-being. Bayesian networks have gained importance in ecosystem service modelling and we show how, in recent literature, this approach has attempted to address strategic behaviour issues. Using simple simulations, we illustrate that the strategic behaviour of stakeholders could be better modelled with an integration of game theory concepts in Bayesian networks. This approach may help to understand the rationale behind stakeholders' behaviour and foresee their actions. Furthermore, the comparison of environmental results with cooperative and strategic behaviours raises questions about the role of humans in the production of ecosystem services, and on the correct way to value their benefits.

This paper proposes a tool for the management of marine and coastal areas based on the ecosystem service framework and the Bayesian network approach. The participative methodology used makes this tool very suitable for addressing issues related to community-led coastal development and Blue Growth. The Salento (Italy) artisanal fisheries case study is used to test the usefulness of our approach. Salento is characterized by declining fisheries and increasing tourism development. Cause–effect relationships between human activities and ecosystem services are modeled to show the differences in stakeholder behavior under different scenarios. Results indicate that increasing tourist flow and related infrastructure are not perceived as threats to the local ecosystem equilibrium, but the problem of water quality should be carefully considered to prevent future negative feedback. The model can be used as a methodological guide by local public authorities as well as economic and civil society groups. It may be particularly useful for the Fisheries Local Action Groups, which have been explicitly created to design and implement bottom-up strategies that fit their regions’ needs to increase economic, social, and environmental welfare.

The new Common Fishery Policy recognizes that an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management needs to be implemented, and that sustainable development of fisheries areas includes the possibility of diversification of the income of fishers through the development of complementary activities. This study presents a theoretical framework for the analysis of the relationships between human activities and ecosystem services in coastal and marine environments. In a more specific way, we want to focus on the environmental changes caused by human activities and how these environmental changes, in turn, affect the outcome and the behavior of fishers. A Bayesian network approach is used to build a generic model starting from a traditional ecosystem services cascade framework. Literature on ecosystem services is increasingly interested on the definition and quantification of their social value. In this work, we focus on the private benefit generated by the use of ecosystem services, and we model fishers’ behaviors on the base of the potential benefits provided by alternative economic activities making use of ecosystem services. Preliminary results according to our alpha-level generic model show how changes in driver variables (e.g. tourism level and fish stock state) may influence the decision of fishers to take advantage of alternative economic activities (e.g. tourism services) instead of depending only on fisheries.

Linking landscapes to socio-economic benefits necessarily requires considering the usability of landscape structure. To do so, however, depends on the interaction between users and producers of landscape-related services. We illustrate this interaction with a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) in a case study analysing the connection between residents' perceptions of landscape structure and agritourism restaurants in the eastern lowlands of Ferrara (Italy). We use estimates of prior and conditional probabilities from a mix of different data: land use, survey data, regional statistics, and expert judgements to show the likely effects of the landscape structure on the local economy by using intermediate forms of services (i.e. second-order services). The second-order service is highly influenced by the agritourism density and by the frequency with which customers dine at agritourism restaurants and less by landscape attractiveness, confirming the importance of the supply and demand of second-order services in the provision of landscape-related services.

Although agricultural ecosystems can provide humans with a wide set of benefits agricultural production system management is mainly driven by food production. As a consequence, a need to ensure food security globally has been accompanied by a significant decline in the state of ecosystems. In order to reduce negative trade-offs and identify potential synergies it is necessary to improve our understanding of the relationships between various ecosystem services (ES) as well as the impacts of farm management on ES provision. We present a spatially explicit application that captures and quantifies ES trade-offs in the crop systems of Llanada Alavesa in the Basque Country. Our analysis presents a quantitative assessment of selected ES including crop yield, water supply and quality, climate regulation and air quality. The study is conducted using semantic meta-modeling, a technique that enables flexible integration of models to overcome the service-by-service modeling approach applied traditionally in ES assessment.

Since the 1950s, intensification and scale enlargement of agriculture have changed agricultural landscapes across Europe. The intensification and scale enlargement of farming was initially driven by the large-scale application of synthetic fertilizers, mechanization and subsidies of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Then, after the 1990s, a further intensification and scale enlargement, and land abandonment in less favored areas was caused by globalization of commodity markets and CAP reforms. The landscape changes during the past six decades have changed the flows and values of ecosystem services. Here, we have reviewed the literature on agricultural policies and management, landscape structure and composition, and the contribution of ecosystem services to regional competitiveness. The objective was to define an analytical framework to determine and assess ecosystem services at the landscape scale. In contrast to natural ecosystems, ecosystem service flows and values in agricultural landscapes are often a result of interactions between agricultural management and ecological structures. We describe how land management by farmers and other land managers relates to landscape structure and composition. We also examine the influence of commodity markets and policies on the behavior of land managers. Additionally, we studied the influence of consumer demand on flows and values of the ecosystem services that originate from the agricultural landscape.

Diverse tipologie di operatori economici di un territorio trasformano i beni pubblici dando loro un valore aggiunto e creando servizi (privati) per soddisfare la domanda del mercato. I benefici socio-economici prodotti si possono dunque raggruppare in tre categorie generali in base alla natura del bene che li ha generati: 1) benefici socio-economici generati dall’agricoltura attraverso la produzione di beni privati (cibo, energia, fibre, ecc.); 2) benefici socio-economici generati dai beni pubblici (opportunità ricreative); 3) benefici socio-economici generati dall’interazione di beni pubblici e privati (ad es. prodotti Dop, Igp).

Fog oases in western South America (locally named lomas) are distributed in a kind of fragmented or patchy way into the coastal desert. Their origin, as well as their current ecological connections in terms of species' dispersal capability, remains an open question. We analyzed the latitudinal pattern in plant species and phylogenetic similarities of 13 lomas, which cover the latitudinal extent of these habitats, from 7°58′ to 26°15′ S. A data-set of 1004 species from available checklists was considered. Plant species composition and phylogenetic relationships among lomas were analyzed by non-metric multidimensional scaling. Our results show three main groups of lomas (northern Peruvian, southern Peruvian, and North-Central Chilean lomas) that are aligned along a complex, nonlinear north–south gradient in ordination space. The weak species overlap between Peruvian and Chilean lomas, together with the higher content in endemic species of the Chilean communities, supports the hypothesis that, at least recently, species composition of the three main groups of lomas has been shaped by desert barriers limiting plant dispersal.