Ecosystem services and opportunity costs shift spatial priorities for conserving forest biodiversity

PLoS One. 2014 Nov 13;9(11):e112557. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0112557. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Inclusion of spatially explicit information on ecosystem services in conservation planning is a fairly new practice. This study analyses how the incorporation of ecosystem services as conservation features can affect conservation of forest biodiversity and how different opportunity cost constraints can change spatial priorities for conservation. We created spatially explicit cost-effective conservation scenarios for 59 forest biodiversity features and five ecosystem services in the county of Telemark (Norway) with the help of the heuristic optimisation planning software, Marxan with Zones. We combined a mix of conservation instruments where forestry is either completely (non-use zone) or partially restricted (partial use zone). Opportunity costs were measured in terms of foregone timber harvest, an important provisioning service in Telemark. Including a number of ecosystem services shifted priority conservation sites compared to a case where only biodiversity was considered, and increased the area of both the partial (+36.2%) and the non-use zone (+3.2%). Furthermore, opportunity costs increased (+6.6%), which suggests that ecosystem services may not be a side-benefit of biodiversity conservation in this area. Opportunity cost levels were systematically changed to analyse their effect on spatial conservation priorities. Conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services trades off against timber harvest. Currently designated nature reserves and landscape protection areas achieve a very low proportion (9.1%) of the conservation targets we set in our scenario, which illustrates the high importance given to timber production at present. A trade-off curve indicated that large marginal increases in conservation target achievement are possible when the budget for conservation is increased. Forty percent of the maximum hypothetical opportunity costs would yield an average conservation target achievement of 79%.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Biodiversity*
  • Climate
  • Computer Simulation
  • Conservation of Natural Resources / methods*
  • Ecology / methods*
  • Forestry*
  • Forests*
  • Geography
  • Norway

Grants and funding

MS received funding from the European Research Council under grant 263027 (‘Ecospace’), and from the Research Council of Norway (Yggdrasil grant). GMR, DNB and SB received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement No. 244065 (POLICYMIX project (http://policymix.nina.no)). BN was supported by the project ECOSERVICE (Approaches for integrated assessment of forest ecosystem services under large scale bioenergy utilization) financed by the Research Council of Norway, RCN grant no 233641/E50. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.