Mountain Ecosystem Services: Who Cares?
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Author / Producer
Date
2012-03
Publication Type
Journal Article
ETH Bibliography
yes
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Abstract
Mountain regions provide diverse goods and services to human society. At the same time, mountain ecosystems are sensitive to rapid global development. Over the past 2 decades the number of papers mentioning “ecosystem services” (ESS) has risen exponentially. While the concept holds great potential to improve the societal relevance of conservation efforts, it is at risk of dying of misuse and reduction to a buzzword. The definitions of the term often compete and the utility of the concept is under debate. The present article reviews the literature on mountain ESS to investigate whether the term was understood correctly by the community, and addresses the question whether ESS is a suitable concept to protect mountain regions. We link land use and other physical properties of terrestrial ecosystems with their capacity to provide ESS with a view to mapping the global supply of ESS and we contrast it with population density data as a proxy for the demand for ESS. The spatially explicit assessment shows that we can distinguish between mountain areas where demand and supply are well balanced from mountain areas where demand and supply are unbalanced. For these different types of mountain regions we suggest different approaches to package the concept of ESS into spatial decision-making.
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Publication status
published
Editor
Book title
Journal / series
Volume
32 (S1)
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
International Mountain Society
Event
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
Mountains; ecosystem services; ecosystem functions; review; global mapping
Organisational unit
03823 - Grêt-Regamey, Adrienne / Grêt-Regamey, Adrienne
02226 - NSL - Netzwerk Stadt und Landschaft / NSL - Network City and Landscape
02655 - Netzwerk Stadt u. Landschaft ARCH u BAUG / Network City and Landscape ARCH and BAUG