Developing qualitative ecosystem service relationships with the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response framework: A...

Area of Science:

• Environmental management
• Social-ecological systems analysis
• Ecosystem services assessment

Background:

• Evaluating environmental management effectiveness is crucial but often hindered by scarce data.
• Understanding social-ecological relationships in coupled human and natural systems is complex.
• Resource managers require tools to assess management strategy impacts on ecosystem services and societal well-being.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a novel method for modeling qualitative cause-effect relationships between management strategies and ecosystem services.
• To support resource managers in understanding social-ecological dynamics and strategy tradeoffs.
• To provide a framework for organizing and evaluating social, environmental, and cultural indicators.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing participant-provided information to model cause-effect relationships.
• Organizing indicators within the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework.
• Employing decision trees and numerical interaction strengths for relationship evaluation.
• Applying matrix multiplication to model direct and indirect interaction effects.

Main Results:

• Development of a method to visualize plausible interaction effects of management strategies on ecosystem services.
• Generation of data tables illustrating the impacts of management strategies.
• Demonstration of the method's applicability through a water quality case study on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Conclusions:

• The presented method offers a valuable approach to overcome data limitations in assessing environmental management strategies.
• It enhances the understanding of complex social-ecological interactions and informs decision-making for sustainable resource management.
• The framework facilitates the evaluation of tradeoffs between different management strategies and their consequences on ecosystem services.