Ecosystem services are the benefits humans obtain from nature, linking social and ecological systems together. Incorporating these into planning can enable better and more sustainable land management decisions in urban areas. However, traditional ecosystem service assessments generally only account for the distribution of service providing areas and do not consider other important socio-ecological interactions. The process behind the provisioning and consumption of services is much more complex than that and, thus, ecosystem service assessments should account for the large range of factors that contribute towards the process. In this study, we integrate geospatial data layers, ecosystem services models and social data to explore the nature and ecology of the spatial arrangement of high-rate multi-service providing areas, known as hotspots, across the Chicago metro-region and their link to local social systems. Specifically, we: (1) mapped the distribution of six services (habitat for species, climatic regulation, flooding and erosion control, nutrient delivery, and visitation potential) mainly using the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) tool, (2) designated areas providing multiple ecosystem services at high rates (top 20th percentile) as ecosystem services hotspots, and (3) linked hotspots to spatial, biophysical and sociodemographic attributes of the landscape.
Results/Conclusions
This methodology allows identifying relationships between socio-ecological properties and the distribution of ecosystem services hotspots. Moreover, it reflects disparities between the provisioning of high-value ecosystem services and the sociodemographic composition of its beneficiaries. Our understanding of this phenomenon will provide further insight on the socio-ecological dynamics underlying human interactions within urban ecosystems like the Chicago metro-region and, thus, help identify factors that can make nature's goods and services more easily available to different communities in the city. This opens a dialog to characterize accessibility, or the potential to reach and benefit from ecosystem service providing areas, and make it an active component of management strategies, particularly in urban socio-ecological systems.