Quantification and mapping of regulating and provisioning ecosystem services and their interrelationships in the watershed

• Grant number: 21/10343-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: July 10, 2022
• End date: April 29, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Geosciences - Physical Geography
• Principal Investigator: Raul Reis Amorim
• Grantee: Ulises Rodrigo Magdalena
• Supervisor: Thiago Sanna Freire Silva
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências (IG). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Stirling, Scotland
• Associated to the scholarship: 18/22907-1 - Modelling the costs, benefits, and economic opportunities associated with vegetation conservation in the Piracicaba, Capivari, and Jundiaí watersheds (SP and MG), BP.DR

Abstract

Freshwater is an essential resource to support and ensure human life, and thus essential for regional sustainable development. For this reason, freshwater is considered an ecosystem service of ''provisioning'', "regulating", and "supporting", as it contributes directly and indirectly to human well-being through recreation, power generation, transportation, and other activities. Ecosystem services can be defined as ecosystem functions and natural processes that provide goods and services to human needs. The understanding of the ecosystem functions and their interlinkages with multiple services is key to the definition and evaluation of public policies for environmental conservation. Published quantitative methods for ecosystem functions address cause-effect analysis in only one ecosystem service, when there are alterations in its drivers. It is thus necessary to use methods that highlight the interlinkages of different functions with multiple services, to properly assess the trade-offs, synergies, and no-effects in response to changes in drivers, supporting decision-making especially in freshwater environments. The objective of this project is therefore to understand how vegetation in protected areas within a watershed with multiple land uses / land cover mediates the functions of erosion regulation and sediment retention, and their impact on the interrelations of associated ecosystem services. (AU)