Journal Article

Assessing impact of land use and climate change on regulating ecosystem services in the czech republic

Pártl, Adam, Harmáčková, Zuzana V., Krkoška lorencová, Eliška, Landová, Lucie, Vačkář, David

2016

Overview

Ecosystem services, defined as benefits provided by ecosystem functioning to society, are essential to human well-being. Due to global environmental change and related anthropogenic drivers, ecosystems are often degraded, which hinders the delivery of ecosystem services. This study aims to quantify the impacts of land use and climate change on two regulating ecosystem services-carbon sequestration and water purification in terms of nitrogen retention in the Czech Republic. While employing approaches of scenarios and modeling, we illustrate current and potential future status of these ecosystem services. Our results show that among the ecosystem change drivers, one of the dominant domestic land-use change of (Business-As-Might-Be-Usual) scenario is change of arable land and grassland to forest area that increases by 4.5% in 2080 compared to 2000. The results of ecosystem service modeling based on scenario for the years 2050 and 2080 indicate that the highest yearly carbon sequestration rate occurred in 2000-2050, reaching 640 GgC·yr −1 , 2000-2080 shows decline in this regulating service by 16%. Average nitrogen leaching to water streams reached 0.75 kgN·ha −1 ·yr −1 for in 2050 scenario and 0.80 kgN·ha −1 ·yr −1 for in 2080 scenario as a result of decreasing nitrogen load, which suggested a decrease in nitrogen pollution compared to 2000. Since ecosystem services have not been extensively mainstreamed into research and policies in eastern European countries, we aim to contribute to improvement of knowledge on current status and potential future pathways of the provision of regulating ecosystem services in the Czech Republic.

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis,The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subject: Agricultural land / Anthropogenic factors / Arable land / arable soils / Carbon sequestration / Climate change / Creeks & streams / Czech Republic / drivers / Eastern European region / Ecological function / Ecosystem services / Ecosystems / Environment models / Environmental changes / forests / Grasslands / Human influences / InVEST / issues and policy / Land use / land use change / Leaching / modeling / Nitrogen / nitrogen retention / pollution load / scenarios / Special Feature: Ecosystem Management in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe / streams / Water pollution / Water purification