Delivering multiple ecosystem service benefits in real landscapes

Ecosystems and their biodiversity deliver products such as food, fibre and fuel, as well as a range of essential services such as climate regulation, water and soil regulation and cultural and recreational services, which are all important for human well-being nationally, internationally and globally. Globally, and for many individual sub-regions, the majority of the world's ecosystems have become severely degraded, and their continued ability to provide goods and services is under threat. The fundamental role that biodiversity plays in regulating the ecological processes (e.g. primary production, nutrient recycling) that underpin ecosystem services is acknowledged, but understanding of the relationships between biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services is poor. We need to improve our understanding of these links if we are sustain or enhance the benefits we are able to obtain from ecosystems in the face of future environmental, demographic and land use change.
The three goals of the BESS programme are: (1) to rigorously define how biodiversity within landscapes underpins the delivery of different ecosystem services at a range of scales and across gradients; (2) to establish whether there are critical levels of biodiversity required to deliver different kinds of services under different driver-pressure scenarios, as well as which enhance the resilience of ecosystems to those different drivers; and (3) to develop novel tools and indicators appropriate for tracking and measuring biodiversity and ecosystem services under those different scenarios (BESS Science Plan, 2011). BESS consortia will address these questions within four different landscape types: (1) lowland agricultural multifunctional; (2) coastal wetlands; (3) uplands; and (4) urban.
The Directorate's research activities (detailed in this proposal) will complement this by establishing frameworks and mechanisms through which these advances in knowledge and understanding can be translated into policy and practice. This will enhance the impact of the BESS programme at both decision-making and management-relevant scales in relation to maximising the services and benefits that we obtain from our natural capital resource.
In order for BESS to make a significant impact on policy and practice, it is essential that the relevance of the science to policy is made explicit, and in particular that the effects of different policy options at different scales on ecosystem service provision are clear. The focus of the individual projects within BESS will be on specific types of landscapes, but the delivery of ecosystem-level objectives frequently requires the simultaneous management of different landscape types within a much larger landscape. The research conducted by the Directorate will therefore specifically focus on such 'whole landscape' approaches, and how progress in scientific understanding of process and monitoring ecosystem services in specific landscapes can be integrated into 'whole landscape' initiatives in practice.
The overall aim of the research is to develop and apply a framework for translating the landscape-specific BESS research to a whole landscape system. The research will have three specific objectives:
1. To investigate the range of options for management interventions to enhance the delivery of single and multiple ecosystems services from different landscapes, and to develop appropriate tools for monitoring their effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and efficiency.
2. To build on an existing modelling framework to model and evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of different biodiversity-ecosystem service related interventions in real landscapes.
3. To work in collaboration with exemplar landscape initiatives to demonstrate how the work under objectives 1 and 2 can be used to inform the development, implementation and evaluation of landscape-scale ecosystem-based approaches to management.

Generation of impact from this research will form part of the overall BESS communications strategy and the implementation strategy related to that. Activities detailed the BESS communications strategy will help to deliver a series of outcomes for policy-makers and practitioners at both national and international level (BESS Communications Strategy draft, 2012). There are a number of desired outcomes from the BESS programme: (i) the wide application of BESS-related science and research beyond the programme itself, nationally and internationally; (ii) the influence of BESS research on international policy development (such as IPBES); (iii) the influence of BESS on strategic national and local-level environmental decision-making; (iv) the influence of BESS on discussions of environmental issues in popular culture influenced by BESS; and (v) the influence of BESS on landscape management. The research contained in this proposal will focus especially on the impact of BESS on policy and practice.
For BESS research to have an impact on policy and practice, it must be accessible to those who would seek to apply it. To enable this, we will work in collaboration with Professor Bill Sutherland at the University of Cambridge to develop an ecosystem services section for 'conservation evidence' website (www.conservationevidence.com). ConservationEvidence.com is now a well-established website, set up in 2004 with the specific aim of providing practitioners access to the latest and most relevant ecological knowledge to support their policy or management decisions. It publishes synopses of current research, contains a searchable database of summaries of previously published scientific papers, reports, reviews or systematic reviews that document the effects of interventions, and hosts the Conservation Evidence online journal, which allows practitioners to document the evidence for the effectiveness of interventions. Much of the work on evidence-based conservation has been on interventions for biodiversity, including pollinators and landscape studies, and there is now a strong desire to extend further into ecosystem services and landscape-scale research (Sutherland was a member of the Lawton Review 'Making Space for Nature' and has led research exercises to collate options for enhancing ecosystem services). The conservationevidence.com website will provide a freely accessible portal for practitioners to use the results of the evaluation of ecosystem-service interventions. This makes ConservationEvidence.com an ideal vehicle for ensuring the long-term impact of BESS research and its accessibility to the practitioner community.
Dissemination of the results of this research to policy and government, non-governmental organisations, business, education, public and the media, will also be achieved through the BESS communications strategy (BESS Communication, Engagement and Knowledge Exchange Strategy 2011-2016). In addition, we will seek to maximise the impact of the work through working with other NERC initiatives and programmes, especially with the Valuing Nature Network, the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, and with the LWEC/NERC Knowledge Exchange programme, including close liaison with other UKRC KE specialists.