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Andean forests decreased in area over the past decade, and communities throughout the Andes are experiencing environmental degradation and soil fertility loss. But amid deforestation, forests returned to some Andean regions, producing local ‘forest transitions’, or net increases in forest cover. The mechanisms that drive these local transitions – often in part the actions of residents – are still little studied, but hold key information for creating successful forest and landscape restoration interventions. This paper investigates cloud forest cover dynamics in Intag, a region in northwest Andean Ecuador where people were actively reforesting by planting trees. We used remote sensing analysis of LANDSAT imagery (from 1991, 2001, and 2010) and household surveys and oral histories with residents of four communities. Results from remote sensing show that prior to reforestation projects (before 2001), deforestation rates were high (> 3%/year). But from 2001 to 2010 forest recovery surpassed deforestation – a local forest transition (net 3% forest cover). But although deforestation rates slowed precipitously (< 2%) people continued to clear forests in the highlands even as forests regrew around communities. This change in clearing rates and spatial redistribution of forest cover reflects people’s reasons for planting trees – to restore water and other key ecosystem services perceive to be ‘scarce’. The results point to a new ‘path’ by which forest transitions occur – the ecosystem service scarcity path – in which local demand for forest ecosystem services drive forest recovery.

Regulating ecosystem services (ES) fundamentally underpin biosphere integrity, human safety, and the provision of most other ES. However, the pathways by which regulating ES generate benefits for people are complex and vary spatially and temporally. Emerging ES decision-making frameworks underemphasize regulating services because they focus on ES that have more obvious links to human wellbeing (e.g., in close proximity to beneficiaries with very short time lags). Lack of attention towards regulating ES can lead to unintended management trade-offs that create risk for human wellbeing and can cause immediate and delayed impacts on cultural and provisioning ES. Therefore, a remaining challenge for ES frameworks is to address the full ensemble of processes and feedbacks whereby ecosystems contribute to human wellbeing over time, including through regulating services. We address this challenge by (i) reviewing the complexities associated with regulating ES components—capacity, ecological pressures, and demand, (ii) exploring the spatial and temporal variability that influence regulating ES components, including the flow of service benefits, and (iii) illustrating the interdependency of regulating ES components through examples of ES that are linked hydrologically. We conclude that ES capacity, pressure, demand and the flow of benefits are distinct, but intricately linked components that influence how regulating ES provide benefits and improve human wellbeing. We pose that ES assessment frameworks could be improved by including indicators of regulating ES that differentiate between the capacity to provide a regulating ES, the demand for the same, and the actual service that is conveyed, the latter of which is influenced by underlying capacity and ecological pressure. These indicators should also be spatially and temporally explicit to fully incorporate the dynamic influence of temporal variability, spatial scale, and landscape configuration on regulating ES and the benefits they yield.

1.Increasing demand for benefits provided by riverine ecosystems threatens their sustainable provision. The ecosystem service concept is a promising avenue to inform riverine ecosystem management, but several challenges have prevented the application of this concept. 2.We quantitatively assess the field of riverine ecosystem services’ progress in meeting these challenges. We highlight conceptual and methodological gaps, which have impeded integration of the ecosystem service concept into management. 3.Across 89 relevant studies, 33 unique riverine ecosystem services were evaluated, for a total of 404 ecosystem service quantifications. Studies quantified between one and 23 ecosystem services, although the majority (55%) evaluated three or less. Among studies that quantified more than one service, 58% assessed interactions between services. Most studies (71%) did not include stakeholders in their quantification protocols, and 34% developed future scenarios of ecosystem service provision. Almost half (45%) conducted monetary valuation, using 16 methods. Only 9% did not quantify or discuss uncertainties associated with service quantification. The indicators and methods used to quantify the same type of ecosystem service varied. Only 3% of services used indicators of capacity, flow, and demand in concert. 4.Our results suggest indicators, data sources, and methods for quantifying riverine ecosystem services should be more clearly defined and accurately represent the service they intend to quantify. Furthermore, more assessments of multiple services across diverse spatial extents and of riverine service interactions are needed, with better inclusion of stakeholders. Addressing these challenges will help riverine ecosystem service science inform river management. 5.Synthesis and applications. The ecosystem service concept has great potential to inform riverine ecosystem management and decision making processes. However, this review of riverine ecosystem service quantification uncovers several remaining research gaps, impeding effective use of this tool to manage riverine ecosystems. We highlight these gaps and point to studies showcasing methods that can be used to address them. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Effectively conserving ecosystem services in order to maintain human wellbeing is a global need that requires an understanding of where ecosystem services are produced by ecosystems and where people benefit from these services. However, approaches to effectively identify key locations that have the capacity to supply ecosystem services and actually contribute to meeting human demand for those services are lacking at broad spatial scales. We developed new methods that integrate measures of the capacity of ecosystems to provide services with indicators of human demand and ability to access these services. We then identified important areas for three ecosystem services currently central to protected area management in Canada—carbon storage, freshwater, and nature-based recreation—and evaluated how these hotspots align with Canada’s current protected areas and resource development tenures. We find that locations of ecosystem service capacity overlap only weakly (27–36%) with actual service providing areas (incorporating human access and demand). Overlapping hotspots of provision for multiple ecosystem services are also extremely limited across Canada; only 1.2% (∼56 000 km2) of the total ecosystem service hotspot area in Canada consists of overlap between all three ecosystem services. Canada’s current protected area network also targets service capacity to a greater degree than provision. Finally, one-half to two-thirds of current ecosystem service hotspots (54–66%) overlap with current and planned resource extraction activities. Our analysis demonstrates how to identify areas where conservation and ecosystem service management actions should be focused to more effectively target ecosystem services to ensure that critical areas for ecosystem services that directly benefit people are conserved. Further development of these methods at national scales to assess ecosystem service capacity and demand and integrate this with conventional biodiversity and conservation planning information will help ensure that both biodiversity and ecosystem services are effectively safeguarded.