Unraveling patterns of ecosystem services supply : a case study in southern Chile

In light of the unprecedented ongoing human impacts on the planet, it is crucial to understand how changing environmental and social conditions affect the supply of ecosystem services and human wellbeing. While the ecosystem services literature has increased steadily in the last decade, especially in cultural landscapes of the Global North, ecosystem services remain poorly understood in data scarce regions with high biodiversity in the Global South. In these regions this generates a gap concerning a prevalent lack of knowledge for the wider use of ecosystem services and for their practical implementation and operationalization in management, planning and policy instrument development. Hence, this thesis addresses this knowledge gap with the following questions: i) How can we map and model the spatial distribution of ecosystem services supply in data scarce regions? ii) What are the linkages between ecosystem services supply and wellbeing? iii) How do ecosystem services distribution and inequalities need to be addressed in policy instrument development? In this thesis I set out to answer these questions by employing the ecosystem services approach which contributes to the generation of new information about ecosystem services, increases scientific understanding of nature-wellbeing linkages and can also inform policy development and management planning, i.e., the operationalization of the ecosystem service concept. In my first chapter I characterize and evaluate the InVEST seasonal water yield model’s ability to predict water ecosystem services along a large latitudinal gradient (34.7S°-55S°) in 224 watersheds. I compare InVEST seasonal water yield model outputs with streamflow observations and show how spatial and temporal factors can affect model performance. ...