Investigating potential supply of ecosystem services in cultural landscapes through efficiency analysis

One of the paramount challenges in natural resource management revolves around the delicate equilibrium between the demand for and the supply of diverse Ecosystem Services (ESs) within a cultural landscape. Recognizing the centrality of cultural landscapes to human well-being, the sustainability of these landscapes hinges upon the health and stability of ecosystems that can effectively provide the required ESs. Over the long term, the sustainable supply of ESs is constrained by the potential supply of ESs. Understanding the potential supply of ESs is crucial for averting compromises to the ecosystems within a landscape. This article introduces a novel perspective on evaluating the ESs of a landscape by means of efficiency analysis. Instead of presenting the potential supply of ESs in absolute terms, we offer a comparative analysis of ESs' relative supply to associated management costs. In principle, the efficiency of Landscape Units (LUs) is defined as the ratio of the potential supply of multiple ESs to the costs associated with land use and land cover management. The resultant efficiency maps serve as hot and cold spot maps, revealing efficient ecosystem compositions that yield multiple ESs. This composition reflects management efforts, incorporating various management costs. Forests emerge as pivotal ecosystems in landscapes, delivering the most ESs at the lowest costs. These efficiency maps offer valuable insights for regional planners, enabling them to enhance the supply of ES in inefficient LUs by studying the ecosystem structure and associated costs of the most efficient LUs.