ESLab application to a boreal watershed in southern Finland: preparing for a virtual research environment of ecosystem services

We report on preparatory work to develop a virtual laboratory for ecosystem services, ESLab, and demonstrate its pilot application in southern Finland. The themes included in the pilot are related to biodiversity conservation, climate mitigation and eutrophication mitigation. ESLab is a research env...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Landscape ecology 2015-03, Vol.30 (3), p.561-577
Main Authors: Holmberg, Maria, Akujärvi, Anu, Anttila, Saku, Arvola, Lauri, Bergström, Irina, Böttcher, Kristin, Feng, Xiaoming, Forsius, Martin, Huttunen, Inese, Huttunen, Markus, Laine, Yki, Lehtonen, Heikki, Liski, Jari, Mononen, Laura, Rankinen, Katri, Repo, Anna, Piirainen, Vanamo, Vanhala, Pekka, Vihervaara, Petteri
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Climate change mitigation
Conservation areas
Ecology
Ecosystem services
Ecosystem studies
Ecosystems
Environmental changes
Environmental Management
Eutrophication
Harvesting
Land use
Landscape Ecology
Landscape/Regional and Urban Planning
Life Sciences
Nature Conservation
Research Article
Sustainable Development
Virtual reality
Watershed management
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Summary:We report on preparatory work to develop a virtual laboratory for ecosystem services, ESLab, and demonstrate its pilot application in southern Finland. The themes included in the pilot are related to biodiversity conservation, climate mitigation and eutrophication mitigation. ESLab is a research environment for ecosystem services (ES), which considers ES indicators at different landscape scales: habitats, catchments and municipalities and shares the results by a service that utilizes machine readable interfaces. The study area of the pilot application is situated in the boreal region of southern Finland and covers 14 municipalities and ten catchments including forested, agricultural and nature conservation areas. We present case studies including: present carbon budgets of natural ecosystems; future carbon budgets with and without the removal of harvest residues for bioenergy production; and total phosphorus and nitrogen future loads under climate and agricultural yield and price scenarios. The ESLab allows researchers to present and share the results as visual maps, statistics and graphs. Our further aim is to provide a toolbox of easily accessible virtual services for ES researchers, to illustrate the comprehensive societal consequences of multiple decisions (e.g. concerning land use, fertilisation or harvesting) in a changing environment (climate, deposition).
ISSN:0921-2973
1572-9761
DOI:10.1007/s10980-014-0122-z