Hi Sandra,

as you know we are working since a time on quantifying ecosystem services and trade-offs. I guess we first need to find / test the appropriate methods to quantify (as far as possible) the different ESS and trade-offs (amongst ESS, land use, and biodiversity - and this should be done for / on different scales. You are sking a hot question, and also the last BiodivERSA call went in this direction - we might need first to i) separate between the ESS to be considered, ii) the methods to analyse / quantify the ESS / trade-offs (which should include a slection of suitable indicators, and iii) check the existing mechanisms, instruments and best management practices for sustaining ES delivery. I think we should somehow combine existing approaches from biodiversity conservation, river basin mnagament, etc. Perhaps we can start with generating pools with ESS, methods, and mechanism in this direction. I guess you know our papers in Journal of Applied Ecology, Current Opinion of Environmental Sustainability, Env. Modell. & Software, etc. Have a look at Ralf Seppelts, my, Sven Lautenbachs and Anna Cords ResearcjhGate site. Would be great if we could work together in this direction and find other interested guys to work on this. Coudl be food for a nice paper ;o) Best wishes, Martin

Thanks Martin for your great input, I know your work and this is actually what this exchange should serve: to identify common interests and find ways to build up on common experience to move towards innovative solutions. We are also exchanging around this question within the framework of FP7 project Openness http://www.openness-project.eu/ but still we have a long way to go....so you inputs are very helpfull!

Dear Sandra, I believe that we should be aware that not all ESs bear the same importance, some of them are crucial for the functioning of the entire social-ecological landscapes (SELs), determining much of their dynamics; so they are real key-state variables to focus on. Addressing only single ESs without looking at the underpinning supporting services is a very partial approach making hard if not impossible to derive the overall supply picture. Supporting services like NPP (through NDVI), as provided by remote sensing techniques in a dynamic and spatially explicit way, underpin most of ESs allowing a proper systemic and synoptic approach to study all the provisioning cascade of resulting ESs that can shift in concert with NPP, which results the real engine of the overall system functioning. This helps gauge synergies, trade-offs, and synchronies and asynchronies of ESs and relative time lags. Therefore, ES assessments must be conducted based on the dynamical features of SELs otherwise all ES estimates would turn very inaccurate and unreliable strongly affecting subsequent accountings and payments for ESs and their practical application and acceptance in the real world. As a result, even the overall provision of ESs does vary with time where different ESs can have a different spatiotemporal role and importance. However, it does not so much depend on the features and dynamics of the individual LULC patches, but rather on the spatial and temporal interactions of the mosaic elements generated from natural and human-managed patches causing synergies and trade-offs between services across multiple spatial and temporal scales. In this respect, key-state variables are fundamental for modelling the overall provision of ESs as they are behind of any SEL functioning. Further research activity must be encouraged in this direction of SEL complexity in order to investigate the main linkages among related supporting services behind overall ES delivery. Landscape connectivity too is not a static but rather a very dynamical feature of complex adaptive systems like SELs, and as such must be treated. So, connectivity relies primarily on the temporal persistence of certain landscape and seascape features that are to be considered the pillars for building up reliable ecological networks. Furthermore, as critical transition in SELs can dramatically change the flow and provisioning of ESs, landscape connectivity can be a very useful indicator of impeding regime shifts and so it can be used as early-warning signal of such transitions (Scheffer et al., 2009; Dakos et al., 2010) as provided, for example, by regularly cross-scale analysis of land cover connectivity (Zurlini et al., in press).

We have shown recently a promising way to monitor phase space trajectories of time series to derive indications on current and past adaptability based on nonlinear analysis of spatial-temporal dynamics of SELs, and also to look at possible impeding regime shifts.

Dear Giovanni, Thank you for your very detailed answer. You raised very important points regarding the crucial importance of the dynamic nature of ES. Regrettably most of the ES mapping up to date, does not consider the key issues you pointed out; this is why I am so interested on this exchange and discussion in order to gather these different experiences and views.

I am looking forward to read land cover connectivity (Zurlini et al., in press),