Mapping ecosystem service flows with land cover scoring maps for data-scarce regions

Natural resource management requires spatially explicit tools to assess the current state of landscapes, to analyse trends and to develop suitable management strategies and interventions. The concept of ecosystem services can help in understanding the importance of natural resources for different stakeholders and at different spatial and temporal scales. Simple methods to map ecosystem services using scoring of land cover types are particularly useful in data scarce regions, but do not reflect the dynamics of supply and demand. Within this study, GIS scripts were developed to represent and assess several different modes of ecosystem service flows between supply and demand, using ecosystem services scoring tables. By integrating the flows, the ecosystem services can be better evaluated. The outcomes do not give quantitative information on whether supply meets demand, but indicate the spatial distributions of both supply and delivery and where ecosystem services are under threat because of changes in ecosystem or flow mechanisms. The scripts allow us to identify sites that are vulnerable to ecosystem service loss and to evaluate possible management scenarios.