Conferencia plenaria invitada: Incorporating functional diversity and social heterogeneity in the assessment of ecosystem services

DIAZ S; QUETIER F; CACERES DM; PEREZ HARGUINDEGUY N

Reunion Internacional

Congreso; Global Land Project Open Science Conference; 2010

Global Land Project IGBP

Global environmental change, including land use change, affects the sustained provision of a wide set of ecosystem services. In 2005 the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment pointed to three major areas in which further progress was needed: (1) regional assessments of the interaction between global environmental change and ecosystem services; (2) refinement of the global ecosystem service classification to account for the fact that different social groups in different regions perceive and value very different benefits from nature; and (3) better understanding of the effect of biodiversity on such benefits. We propose a framework to address all three challenges, intended to understand the links between biodiversity, social heterogeneity and land use change at local (patch to landscape) scales and in specific situations. The key elements are functional biodiversity and social actor strategies, which are linked by specific ecosystem services and land use change trajectories. By building on pre-existing theoretical bodies and combining new methods with existing ones, our framework is applicable to a wide range of situations. However, it is particularly relevant in areas of high asymmetry between different social groups.