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Modelling consequences of change in biodiversity and ecosystems for nature's benefits to people
Citation:
Peterson, G., J. Kabubo-Mariara, N. Crossman, B. Rashleigh, P. Munoz, J. Anticamara, M. Mdemu, AND A. Aunins. Modelling consequences of change in biodiversity and ecosystems for nature's benefits to people. Chapter 5, S. Ferrier, K.N. Ninan, P. Leadley, R., et al. (ed.), The methodological assessment report on scenarios and models of biodiversity and ecosystem services.. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), , Germany, , 159-193, (2016).
Impact/Purpose:
This Chapter describes the current state of ecosystem service models and modeling approaches for IPBES assessment and other users of ecosystem services models. It highlights the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to modeling ecosystem services and critically reviews major types of ecosystem series models for generating outputs of relevance to different policy and decision-making contexts.
Description:
This chapter offers an assessment of the rapidly changing landscape of methods assessing and forecasting the benefits that people receive from nature and how these benefits are shaped by institutions and various anthropogenic assets. There has been an explosion of activity in understanding and modeling the benefits that people receive from nature, and this explosion has provided a diversity of approaches that are both complementary and contradictory. However, there remain major gaps in what current models can do. They are not well suited to estimate most types of benefits at national, regional, or global scales. they are focused on decision analysis, but have not focused on implementation, learning, or dialogue. This hap in particular means that current models are not well suited to bridging among multiple knowledge systems, however, there are initial efforts made towards this goal. Furthermore, while participatory social-ecological scenarios are able to bridge multiple knowledge systems in their assessment and analysis of multiple ecosystem series, the social-ecological scenarios community is fragmented and not well connected. Consequently, IPBES has an excellent knowledge base to build upon, but a real investment in building a more integrated modeling and scenarios community of practice is needed to produce a more complete and useful toolbox of approaches to meet the needs of IPBES assessment and other assessment of nature benefits.
