When to use what: A comparison of three approaches to quantify
relationships among ecosystem services
Abstract
Sustainable landscape management requires accurately identifying the
trade-offs and synergies among ecosystem services (ES). Three commonly
utilized approaches to quantify ES trade-off/synergy relationships
include the space-for-time approach, landscape background-adjusted
space-for-time approach, and temporal trend approach. However, the
similarities and differences among these three approaches in identifying
ES relationships in the same area remain unclear. Thus, we conducted a
case study in the rapidly urbanizing Yangtze River Delta region,
comparing the three approaches based on annual data spanning from 2001
to 2020 for 12 types of ES. We found that: (1) the ES trade-off/synergy
relationships detected by the three approaches exhibit significant
divergencet, with only 1.45% consistency among the 66 pairs of ES
relationships. (2) All three approaches can overlook ES trade-offs, miss
ES synergies, and erroneously detect interactions where none exist. (3)
The mechanisms contributing to the misidentification of ES relationships
by the three approaches include: neglecting the underlying assumptions
of different approaches, insufficient time interval length, short time
series of ES data, data aggregation effects, non-linear changes in ES,
time lag effects of ES relationships, among others. Our results indicate
that each of the three approaches has its own advantages and
disadvantages in identifying ES relationships. Prior to selecting an
approach for identifying relationships between ES in a specific study
area, careful consideration of the availability of time series data, the
characteristics of the chosen ES type, and thorough examination of the
underlying assumptions and uncertainties of each approach are
imperative.