www.floodrisk.org.uk EPSRC Grant: EP/FP202511/1

Spatially explicit negotiation of ecosystem service synergies and trade-offs

Tim Pagella1, Bethanna Jackson2, Brian Reynolds3, Colin Thorne4, Alex Henshaw4 and Fergus Sinclair1,5

1 Bangor University2Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand3Centre of Ecology and Hydrology, Bangor4University of Nottingham5World Agroforestry Centre, Nairobi, Kenya

www.floodrisk.org.uk EPSRC Grant: EP/FP202511/1

Land management and flood risk

www.floodrisk.org.uk EPSRC Grant: EP/FP202511/1

• Ecosystem services, including flood regulation, often involve stocks and flows of material or individuals across landscapes: water, soil, carbon, organisms

• The areal extent and spatial configuration of landscape features (trees, ponds, wetlands) affect these flows and hence the provision of services

• Change in land use or management and the presence of landscape features affect multiple ecosystem services simultaneously

Ecosystem services

Ecosystem Services

Supporting Provisioning

Regulating

Cultural

www.floodrisk.org.uk EPSRC Grant: EP/FP202511/1

Polyscape specification

• Designed as a negotiation tool not a prescriptive model

• Works for any landscape, using national scale digital elevation, land use/cover and soil data

• Incorporates participatory validation and local knowledge about where farmers do and do not want trees, ensures local engagement and ownership.

• Runs fast, in real time, with resolution appropriate for informing field decisions while considering impacts at small (10 km2) to medium (1000 km2) sized landscape contexts

A multiple criteria GIS toolbox

• Spatially explicit evaluation of synergies and trade-offs in the location of trees on surface water flow, farm productivity, sediment transport, carbon storage and biodiversity (woodland habitat connectivity)

Polyscape

www.floodrisk.org.uk EPSRC Grant: EP/FP202511/1

Agriculture Surface runoff Habitat connectivity

Trade off maps

Pontbren (1000 ha)

www.floodrisk.org.uk EPSRC Grant: EP/FP202511/1

Elwy catchment (27 000 ha)

CCM River catchment database © European union JRC 2007

Conclusions – Polyscape utility

• Facilitates wide stakeholder engagement• Use of proxies for ecosystem services is

pragmatic for data sparse contexts• Facilitates cross sector evaluation and

interdisciplinary research• Iterative development and application of tools

fosters the development of adaptive strategies • It is an operational tool that can be applied to

any landscape