Mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services in the outermost regions and overseas countries and territories of the European Union

Abstract

Ecosystem services (ES) are the benefits humans derive from nature. The ES concept has become a framework to assess the state of ecosystems and the services they supply. Mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services (MAES) has become a major tool to inform policy and decision making due to its broad applicability and strong communication power. The EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 has called all Member States of the European Union to map and assess their ecosystems and the services they supply. This includes the Outermost Regions and Overseas Countries and Territories that are linked to Member States such as France, Portugal, Spain,the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. These EU Overseas, mainly islands, present hotspots of biodiversity and ES, comprising cold, arctic kelp forests, coral reefs to tropical rainforests, including endemic and threatened species, and many Overseas territories list among the most vulnerable of the EU. To better protect the environment in these areas, it is necessary to obtain a better understanding of these ecosystems, and their ES. First, this thesis presents an overview of the status quo of efforts to map and assess ecosystems and their services in the EU Overseas. Based on a literature review, existing efforts to map and assess ES were investigated, including grey literature and project reports, focussing on the ecosystem type and scale of conducted studies, the ES classifications applied and the different ES. In total, 268 method applications were found for the period from 1990 to 2017, with grey literature dominating. Front runners where found in the Caribbean region, the Pacific and Macaronesia. The reviewed studies indicated a strong focus on marine and coastal ecosystems for island territories, whereas French Guiana, located on the South American continent had mainly terrestrial ES application studies. In a second step, different methodological applications were tested for the applicability in the ORs and OCTs, applying differing Tiers of complexity in French Guiana, France and the Azores, Portugal. In French Guiana, a Land Use Land Cover (LULC) based matrix-based ES assessment was conducted linking geospatial units to ES by using expert knowledge. A comparative assessment was conducted in French Guiana and Suriname. Experts obtained a 70% similarity in their ES scores. Explanations were sought in sociodemographic factors as well as the distribution and the degree of similarity of the different LULC types and different governance and institutional contexts of the assessments. A complex, data demanding modelling approach was conducted on Terceira Island, Azores. Harmonized LULC data for the EU Overseas are scarce. Therefore, we tested the effects of different input datasets on the supply of the six ecosystem services using the InVEST modelsuit. Significant differences in ES distribution were obtained. Suitable input LULC need to be selected based on the research or policy/decision-making question guiding the modelling study, the ecosystems to be mapped, but also on the spatial resolution of the mapping and data availability at the local level. In a third step, the findings of the two case studies in French Guiana and the Azores were compared to similar case studies applied under the umbrella of the EU MOVE Project. Hereby, a total of 8 case studies were assessed to identify commonalities, challenges and obstacles in the MAES process in the EU Overseas. This thesis concludes with a discussion of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges for the MAES concept in the EU Overseas. Finally, recommendations on how to accelerate the MAES implementation in the EU Overseas and potential future research developments are pointed out.