Within this research project, methods were developed to describe the value and magnitude of chosen marine ecosystem services. The aim was to enable the integration of ecosystem services into political decisions, and in the end contribute to a sustainable management of the coastal zone. The value of ecosystem services provided by two separate but complementary study systems were assessed: shallow fish reproduction habitats and deep sediment habitats.
The marine environment generates a large number of ecosystem services. The coastal zone provides essential habitats for a large part of the economically most important fish species. Also, vegetated areas along the coast bind sediments and nutrients, thus protecting the open sea. Simultaneously, 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.
Aphotic soft substrate sediments cover approximately 90% of the Baltic Sea seafloor and provide crucial ecosystem functions such as decomposition of organic matter and re-mineralization of nutrients. The processes are influenced by the benthic fauna, which decompose and bury matter that otherwise would contribute to eutrophication.
The aim of VALUES was to develop methods to describe the value and magnitude of these ecosystem services, to enable their integration in political decisions and in the end contribute to a sustainable management of the coastal zone.
Illustration of healthy and severely affected recruitment areas for fish. Dense stands of perfoliate pondweed with roach on the left and filamentous algae suffocating the underlying vegetation on the right. Photos: Göran Sundblad and Ulf Bergström.
Valuation and management of ecosystem services has come a long way since the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment (2005), but some key challenges remain. First, ecologists need a better understanding of the complexity of ecosystem 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 betw