Ecosystems provide a wide variety of services that support human livelihoods and well-being. These ecosystem services (ES) have been the subject of rapidly expanding scientific and policy interest, but research has focused mostly on the ecological supply of ES with less emphasis on human demand for them. A more integrated understanding of ES – from ecological function to human beneficiaries – would help target ecosystem management and improve policy effectiveness and equity. Here, we present recent work from California and Vermont that demonstrates the importance of connecting ES supply and demand. In California’s Yolo County, we use a spatially-explicit model to quantify the agricultural benefits of habitat restoration for pollinators. Detailed data on parcel ownership allow us to distinguish and compare private and public benefits of restoration on any farm. In Vermont, we model and map supply and demand for 3 ecosystem services statewide, and we quantify how accounting for demand affects the efficiency of conservation in capturing both human benefits and biodiversity.
Results/Conclusions
In California, we find that habitat restoration for pollinators can generate yield benefits that exceed restoration costs, but the distribution of these benefits varied widely among farms. Private benefits (i.e., to the landowner his/herself) exceed private costs on only 10% of farms. On a further 40% of farms, public benefits (i.e., to neighboring farms) exceed private costs to the landowner. And on the remaining 50% of farms, restoration would generate neither private nor public benefits greater than private costs. In Vermont, we found that maps of ES supply served as a poor proxy for realized benefits to people, because demand changed the spatial distribution of those ES benefits. Including demand when jointly targeting biodiversity and ecosystem service increased the efficiency of conservation efforts in capturing ES without reducing biodiversity outcomes. Our results highlight the importance of integrating ecological supply with social demand when quantifying, conserving, and paying for ES.