Evaluation of forest ecosystem services in Mediterranean areas. A regional case study in South Spain

Abstract

An ecosystem services approach entails the development of a set of evaluation tools in order to quantify the benefits and vulnerabilities of each ecosystem. In this context, the current research explores the conceptualization of different evaluation tools for representative forest ecosystem services in Mediterranean areas. Mediterranean forests provide a wide range of ecosystem services, nevertheless they have to confront various threats such as deforestation, fires, and urban/industrial development. The Mediterranean region has suffered intense changes in land use over the past several decades such as intensification of agricultural and urban development, while marginal croplands have been abandoned and reforested. Thus, the dynamics of land use change have become an important driving force for the potential impact on ecosystem services. Quantifying the magnitude of land use change is therefore essential to estimate its consequences on ecosystem services. Taking this into account, the general aims of this research are (a) to evaluate the state and trends of forest ecosystem services at regional scale in Andalusia (South Spain), (b) to contribute to the methodology for accounting three main forest ecosystem services: carbon storage, protection of soil erosion, and cork oak provisioning, and (c) to assess how theses ecosystem services are affected by drivers of change, such as land use change. In this sense, the main results are the methodologies for the standardization and harmonization of the types of forest ecosystems using the mappings of land use (LULCMA), obtaining an objective quantification of the balance of surface supplying forest ecosystem services, and monitoring over time.