A systematic conservation planning approach to maintaining ecosystem service provision in working landscapes
Jérôme Cimon-Morin,
Jean-Olivier Goyette,
Poliana Mendes,
Stéphanie Pellerin,
Monique Poulin
Affiliations
Jérôme Cimon-Morin
Département des sciences du bois et de la forêt, Faculté de Foresterie, de Géographie et de Géomatique, Université Laval, 2405 rue de la Terrasse, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada Centre d’étude de la forêt, Université du Québec à Montréal, 141 Président-Kennedy, Montréal, QC H2X 1Y4, Canada
Jean-Olivier Goyette
Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science, McGill University, 1205 Dr. Penfield Avenue, Montreal, QC H3A 1B1, Canada Département de phytologie, Faculté des Sciences de l’Agriculture et de l’Alimentation, Université Laval, 2425 rue de l’agriculture, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada
Poliana Mendes
Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science, McGill University, 1205 Dr. Penfield Avenue, Montreal, QC H3A 1B1, Canada Département de phytologie, Faculté des Sciences de l’Agriculture et de l’Alimentation, Université Laval, 2425 rue de l’agriculture, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada
Stéphanie Pellerin
Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science, McGill University, 1205 Dr. Penfield Avenue, Montreal, QC H3A 1B1, Canada Département des sciences biologiques, Institut de recherche en biologie végétale, Université de Montréal, 4101 rue Sherbrooke Est, Montréal, QC H1X 2B2, Canada
Monique Poulin
Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science, McGill University, 1205 Dr. Penfield Avenue, Montreal, QC H3A 1B1, Canada Département de phytologie, Faculté des Sciences de l’Agriculture et de l’Alimentation, Université Laval, 2425 rue de l’agriculture, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada
Balancing human well-being with the maintenance of ecosystem services (ES) for future generations has become one of the central sustainability challenges of the 21st century. In working landscapes, past and ongoing production-centered objectives have resulted in the conversion of ecosystems into simple land-use types, which has also altered the provision of most ES. These inevitable trade-offs between the efficient production of individual provisioning ES and the maintenance of regulating and cultural ES call for the development of a land-use strategy based on the multifunctional use of the landscape. Due to the heterogeneous nature of working landscapes, both protection and restoration actions are needed to improve their multifunctionality. Systematic conservation planning (SCP) offers a decision support framework that can support landscape multifunctionality by indicating where ES management efforts should be implemented. We describe an approach that we developed to include ES provision protection and restoration objectives in SCP with the goal of providing ongoing benefits to society. We explain the general framework of this approach and discuss concepts, challenges, innovations, and prospects for the further development of a comprehensive decision support tool. We illustrate our approach with two case studies implemented in the pan-Canadian project ResNet.
