Ecosystem service interactions across landscapes

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People depend on ecosystem services (ES) such as provision of food and freshwater, pollination, and flood control. Humanity has expended substantial effort to engineer ecosystems to cheaply and reliably produce ES such as food. However, these efforts have often overlooked the fact that landscapes simultaneously produce multiple ES that interact in complex, dynamic ways. Thus, human modification of ecosystems to meet particular human needs has often led to unintended declines in other ES, leading to a global increase in a few services such as food and timber, but a decline in the vast majority of ES. To address this critical issue requires a deeper analysis of the biophysical basis for ES interactions in a spatial context. Although scientists have assessed threats to ES, calculated their value, mapped supply and demand, and assessed the potential future of ES, we still have relatively little understanding of the ecology behind the provision of ES. In particular, current studies tend to disregard both the spatial pattern of landscapes and the interactions among ES, relying instead on static relationships between land use and a single service. I will advance our understanding the role of the spatial pattern of landscapes on the interactions among ES, using the agricultural area of southern Quebec as a case study. With the knowledge we gain, I will build models of ES interactions across agricultural landscapes. I will also undertake the first ever global examination of trade-offs and synergies among a dozen services to understand how agricultural management around the world affects the provision of non-target ES. My research program is designed to help improve management of a portfolio of ES in human-dominated landscapes. We face be a growing tension between food production and maintenance of other ES. My research will lead to a better understanding of how ES interact and the role of landscape structure in modulating their interactions. Without this information, we are limited to managing ecosystems one service at a time, often improving one while unknowingly degrading others.