Mapping and Assessment of changes in ecosystem service delivery - a historical perspective on the Tweed catchment, Scotland - UK
type: CreativeWork
description: For centuries, river catchments and their constituent habitats have been altered and modified through various human activities to maximise provision of tangible benefits like food and water, while impacting on their capacity to provide other less obvious but equally important benefits for human survival. However, in the last few decades, perceptions on the role of catchments as mere providers of tangible benefits have been changing, as recognition has been given to other human beneficial services like regulation of floods. This recognition has drawn increased interest in both science and policy, towards understanding human-nature relations and how approaches like the ecosystem services concept can inform sustainable management of catchments. Although, the multiple and differently weighted relationships existing between habitats and ecosystem services have been acknowledged, the relationship between spatio-temporal change in habitats and spatio-temporal change in ecosystem services delivery, has not received as much attention in the research literature. In this thesis, it is argued that this is an important omission as spatio-temporal habitat change could have broader consequences for ecosystem services provided by a catchment. On this basis, this study maps and assesses the influence of habitat changes across space and time on ecosystem services delivery at a local catchment scale. Approaches to assessing ecosystem service delivery across landscapes and catchments draw on habitat mapping data for those landscapes or catchments. Such data are in turn used as proxies for estimating different ecosystem services delivered by the landscape or catchment based on their integration with other spatial or non-spatial data. To date this approach has been applied to assess contemporary delivery of different ecosystem services. The basis of the approach taken in this study involved comparing a pre-existing contemporary ecosystem service assessment of two chosen sub catchments of…
abstract: For centuries, river catchments and their constituent habitats have been altered and modified through various human activities to maximise provision of tangible benefits like food and water, while impacting on their capacity to provide other less obvious but equally important benefits for human survival. However, in the last few decades, perceptions on the role of catchments as mere providers of tangible benefits have been changing, as recognition has been given to other human beneficial services like regulation of floods. This recognition has drawn increased interest in both science and policy, towards understanding human-nature relations and how approaches like the ecosystem services concept can inform sustainable management of catchments. Although, the multiple and differently weighted relationships existing between habitats and ecosystem services have been acknowledged, the relationship between spatio-temporal change in habitats and spatio-temporal change in ecosystem services delivery, has not received as much attention in the research literature. In this thesis, it is argued that this is an important omission as spatio-temporal habitat change could have broader consequences for ecosystem services provided by a catchment. On this basis, this study maps and assesses the influence of habitat changes across space and time on ecosystem services delivery at a local catchment scale. Approaches to assessing ecosystem service delivery across landscapes and catchments draw on habitat mapping data for those landscapes or catchments. Such data are in turn used as proxies for estimating different ecosystem services delivered by the landscape or catchment based on their integration with other spatial or non-spatial data. To date this approach has been applied to assess contemporary delivery of different ecosystem services. The basis of the approach taken in this study involved comparing a pre-existing contemporary ecosystem service assessment of two chosen sub catchments of…
author: Ncube, Sikhululekile
language: eng
keywords: Ecosystem services, River catchments, Spatio-temporal change, Mapping, Historic, Aerial photography
date published: 2016
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:08:19Z
provider: University of Dundee
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Dundee