Key insights for the future of urban ecosystem services research

Understanding the dynamics of urban ecosystem services is a necessary requirement for adequate planning, management, and governance of urban green infrastructure. Through the three-year Urban Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (URBES) research project, we conducted case study and comparative research on urban biodiversity and ecosystem services across seven cities in Europe and the United States. Reviewing > 50 peer-reviewed publications from the project, we present and discuss seven key insights that reflect cumulative findings from the project as well as the state-of-the-art knowledge in urban ecosystem services research. The insights from our review indicate that cross-sectoral, multiscale, interdisciplinary research is beginning to provide a solid scientific foundation for applying the ecosystem services framework in urban areas and land management. Our review offers a foundation for seeking novel, nature-based solutions to emerging urban challenges such as wicked environmental change issues

Integrated assessment and valuation of ecosystem services - Guidelines and experiences

EU FP7 OpenNESS project deliverable D33 & D4

When we cannot have it all: Ecosystem services trade-offs in the context of spatial planning

Spatial planning has to deal with trade-offs between various stakeholders wishes and needs as part of planning and management of landscapes, natural resources and/or biodiversity. To make ecosystem services (ES) trade-off research more relevant for spatial planning, we propose an analytical framework, which puts stakeholders, their land-use/management choices, their impact on ES and responses at the centre. Based on 24 cases from around the world, we used this framing to analyse the appearance and diversity of real-world ES trade-offs. They cover a wide range of trade-offs related to ecosystem use, including: land-use change, management regimes, technical versus nature-based solutions, natural resource use, and management of species. The ES trade-offs studied featured a complexity that was far greater than what is often described in the ES literature. Influential users and context setters are at the core of the trade-off decision-making, but most of the impact is felt by non-influential users. Provisioning and cultural ES were the most targeted in the studied trade-offs, but regulating ES were the most impacted. Stakeholders characteristics, such as influence, impact faced, and concerns can partially explain their position and response in relation to trade-offs. Based on the research findings, we formulate recommendations for spatial planning. (c) 2017This research was made possible by funds of the European Union EU FP7 project OpenNESS (Grant agreement no. 308428 ). The OpenNESS project is solely responsible for the content of this publication. It does not represent the opinion of the European Union, nor is the European Union responsible for any use that might be made of information appearing herein. For the case study research, additional funds were available from the Spanish National Institute for Agriculture and Food Research and Technology , the Social European Fund (Doc-INIA CCAA), NSF Idaho EPSCoR Program , National Science Foundation (USA) under award number IIA-1301792, the Andalusian Center for the Assessment of Global Change (GLOCHARID Project, 2014), the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs (KB-24-003-012), NGOs Fund in Romania, EEA Financial Mechanism 2009-2014, Ecoplan project (FBO-SBO, Belgium), Flemish Fund for Rural Development (Belgium), the Argentinian Institute of Agricultural Technology ( INTA ), and the Research Institute for Nature and Forest ( INBO ) (Belgium)

Integrating methods for ecosystem service assessment: Experiences from real world situations

The Ecosystem Services (ES) concept highlights the varied contributions the environment provides to humans and there are a wide range of methods/tools available to assess ES. However, in real-world decision contexts a single tool is rarely sufficient and methods must be combined to meet practitioner needs. Here, results from the OpenNESS project are presented to illustrate the methods selected to meet the needs of 24 real-world case studies and better understand why and how methods are combined to meet practical needs. Results showed that within the cases methods were combined to: i) address a range of ES; ii) assess both supply and demand of ES; iii) assess a range of value types; iv) reach different stakeholder groups v) cover weaknesses in other methods used and vi) to meet specific decision context needs. Methods were linked in a variety of ways: i) as input–output chains of methods; ii) through learning; iii) through method development and iv) through comparison/triangulation of results. The paper synthesises these case study-based experiences to provide insight to others working in practical contexts as to where, and in what contexts, different methods can be combined and how this can add value to case study analyses

The Sandbox Task: A novel task to measure implicit and explicit Theory of Mind

Until recently, Theory of Mind (ToM) – the ability to ascribe mental states to others – was assumed to develop around the age of 4 years. In the past, this capacity was tested using verbal false belief tasks. The last 1.5 decades provided data suggesting ToM abilities already before 2 years of age using non-verbal false belief tasks. Recent data indicates that verbal and non-verbal ToM abilities rely on different processing systems (Grosse Wiesmann et al., 2020), often referred to as implicit and explicit ToM. The system underlying implicit ToM, however, requires further investigation and a direct comparison to explicit ToM is missing. We adapted an existing false belief task – the Sandbox task (Bernstein, 2011) – which yields a continuous measure for explicit ToM by measuring an egocentric bias in one’s judgement of another person’s false belief about an object location. In addition, we developed an implicit version of this task, which measures an altercentric bias in one’s own judgement of an object’s location. These two versions allow for explicit and implicit ToM to be measured within the same task. We tested the implicit version with a real object Sandbox in the lab with 18 4-year old children before Covid-19 related lock-down. There was a trend for a difference between the false belief and true belief control conditions that points in direction of an altercentric bias (t(17)=-1,89, p=.08). On this basis we created a tablet-version of the Sandbox task for an online study with children aged 2 to 7 years, data collection is ongoing

Architecture and mechanism of the late endosomal Rab7 like Ypt7 guanine nucleotide exchange factor complex Mon1 Ccz1

The Mon1–Ccz1 complex (MC1) is the guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) for the Rab GTPase Ypt7/Rab7 and is required for endosomal maturation and fusion at the vacuole/lysosome. Here we present the overall architecture of MC1 from Chaetomium thermophilum, and in combining biochemical studies and mutational analysis in yeast, we identify the domains required for catalytic activity, complex assembly and localization of MC1. The crystal structure of a catalytic MC1 core complex bound to Ypt7 provides mechanistic insight into its function. We pinpoint the determinants that allow for a discrimination of the Rab7-like Ypt7 over the Rab5-like Vps21, which are both located on the same membrane. MC1 shares structural similarities with the TRAPP complex, but employs a novel mechanism to promote nucleotide exchange that utilizes a conserved lysine residue of Ypt7, which is inserted upon MC1 binding into the nucleotide-binding pocket of Ypt7 and contributes to specificity