 production functions, their nonlinearities and interactions among multiple services, as well as of how to map these relationships and services at relevant spatial scales. Secondly, the value of ecosystem services must be explicitly and systematically integrated into decision making, policy and natural resource management at several levels of organisation. A fundamental challenge is also to understand how the value of ecosystem services may be affected by pressures from human activities. These challenges are particularly urgent in coastal areas of the world, including inland seas like the Baltic Sea, which contain some of the highest service values in the world, and where there is a severe risk of human pressure reducing the production of services.
The research project VALUES, financed by Swedish EPA, was carried out from 2014 to 2016. The background to the project was the need to for a better understanding of the complexity of ecosystem production functions, of how to map ecosystem services and how the value of ecosystem services can be integrated into decision making, policy and natural resource management. VALUES addressed these questions for two complementary types of underwater environments and their associated services, and dis-services, using a production function approach in a cross-disciplinary and integrated framework. Specific user-cases within VALUES, developed through collaboration with end-users and managers, provided concrete examples of how quantitative ecological understanding, together with economic valuation of services, can be successfully integrated at different levels of management.
VALUES was largely based on synthesizing recent research focused on mapping ecosystem production functions in relation to three human pressures; eutrophication, coastal development and invasive species. The value of ecosystem services provided by two separate but complementary study systems, shallow fish reproduction habitats and deep sediment habitats, were assessed. Through cross-disciplinary collaboration between experts on ecology and economy, VALUES i) developed a general framework that provides quantitative assessments of the value associated with services stemming from specific habitats under different human pressure levels, and ii) showed how coherent mapping of ecosystem service values in relation to impacts of major human activities can be successfully integrated in a long term sustainable management of the Baltic Sea. Mapping and valuation of the coastal environment is an important part of environmental objectives assessment as well as Habitats- and Marine Strategy Framework Directives reporting. The project increased the understanding of possibilities and limitations of using the value of marine ecosystem services in a management context.
The first study covered shallow, vegetated coastal habitats in the Baltic Sea. The coastal zone provides essential habitats for a large part of the economically most important fish species such as pike, perch and pikeperch. Of particular importance are shallow vegetated bays and lagoons, as availability to these habitat types have been shown to determine the production and sizes of fish populations. Several important ecosystem services are associated with the shallow vegetated bays functioning as fish reproduction areas. The habitat type provides food and opportunities for recreational fishing, while predatory fish dependent on the habitat type is important for ecosystem functioning through controlling growth of nuisance algae and indirectly habitat and water quality. Thus, these shallow sheltered bays constitute a habitat type maintaining a number of valuable ecosystem services, while at the same time being subject to several human pressures, as the dense human populations along the coasts put high, and accelerating, pressure on the coastal ecosystem through overexploitation, habitat transformation and pollution, threatening the valuable ecosystem services provided by these shallow-water habitats. A recent analysis shows that these habitats constituting fish reproduction ar