8th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT – ICEEM08 9 - 12 SEPTEMBER 2015 IASI, ROMANIA
CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS BOOK
EDITORS: ADELA MARILENA BUBURUZAN DANIELA GAVRILESCU DANIELA FIGHIR CARMEN TEODOSIU
ECOZONE Publishing House, Iasi
ECOZONE Publishing House 73 Prof. Dimitrie Mangeron Street, 700050 Iasi, Romania Phone: 0040232 271759 E-mail:
[email protected]
ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT. Conferinţă internaţională (8 ;2015 ; Iasi, Romania) Proceedings of the 8th International Conference Environmental Engineering and Management Conference Abstracts Book : 9-12 of September 2015, Iasi, Romania Iaşi : Ecozone, 2015 ISSN 2457-7057 ISSN-L 2457-7049
Text editing: Dr. Adela Marilena BUBURUZAN Cover layout: Dr. George BARJOVEANU
Printed at the CROMALINE Printing House, Iasi, Romania ISSN 2457-7057 ISSN-L 2457-7049
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ECOSYSTEM SERVICE ASSESSMENT IN BRAILA ISLANDS LONG-TERM SOCIOECOLOGICAL RESEARCH SITE Constantin Cazacu*, Cristian Mihai Adamescu, Georgia Lavinia Cosor, Relu Constantin Giuca, Tudor Racoviceanu, Angheluta Vadineanu University of Bucharest, Department of Systems Ecology and Sustainability, Research Centre in Systems Ecology and Sustainability 91 – 95, Splaiul Independenţei, Bucharest 050095, ROMANIA, *:
[email protected]
The concept of ecosystem services become important especially during the last two decades and recently started to influence the European Union (EU) policy. The EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 incorporates the ecosystem services and promotes their assessment and valuation, as well as the integration of these values into accounting and reporting systems at EU and national level. Assessment of ecosystem states and ecosystem services are mandatory for all member states. However, this type of valuation requires a large datasets of information and knowledge about structure and functioning of socio-ecological systems. The term of “ecosystem services” as defined by the international group of experts involved in the “Millennium Ecosystem Assessment” or global initiative of “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity” refers to the benefits that humans can get from nature. Long Term Socio-Ecological Research sites (LTSER) are identified as local or regional socio-ecological complexes, containing natural, man-controlled and man-created and dominated ecosystems which provides not only a multi-site research platform where inter and transdisciplinary knowledge are produced, but also a space where the operational infrastructure, policies and adaptive management plans for sustainability can be designed, developed and tested. Our study area is placed on Braila Islands a long term socio-ecological research site (LTSER-BrI) with a total surface of 2597 sq km from which 205 sq km protected area recognized both at international (Ramsar site, Special Protected Area and Special Conservation Interest) and national level (Natural Park). The LTSER-BrI area extends along Danube River and covers the river terrace and a large floodplain, being shared between four counties and comprises a number of 20 administrative territorial units (i.e. communes). It contains nine EUNIS level 1 habitats covering all types of ecosystems – aquatic (wetland, river etc), terrestrial (grasslands, forests etc), socio-economical (agro-systems, human settlements etc.). Also, within the area there is a large polder formed as result of land reclamation, mainly used for agriculture and known as Large Island of Braila. The aim of this paper is to test a package of methods for assessing the ecosystem services in the LTSER-BrI site and the ability to depict if any long-term changes in the services supply occurred in the area in the last fifty years. Changes in the spatial configuration, ecosystem state and management regimes of the main ecosystem types were analysed considering the period before large land reclamation as reference state. The goal of the study being to provide support in the decision making process in order to prioritize management actions for an optimal delivery of the most important services. The ecosystem services assessment is based and relies on involvement of the stakeholders. That is why our methodology implied the use of Fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) and QUICKScan tools. FCM was applied in subsequent focus groups with primary, secondary and tertiary stakeholders to identify the important features of the area and the dependent relationships among different biodiversity components and multiple uses of the natural and semi-natural resources. The QUICKScan tool is based on Participatory Modelling and Participatory GIS concepts that allows the visualization of different scenarios and their synergies and trade-offs in a decision-making processes together with stakeholders.
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The interpretation of the FCM and QuickScan results in the framework of ecosystem services, in combination with long term statistical and geospatial data allow mapping the ecosystem services for reference and actual state in LTSER-BrI site (Figure 1). Analyzing the results it was noted a general decreasing trend in ecosystems service providing comparing reference versus current state. Anyway in the current state provisioning service seems to have the greatest weight among other services and this is a result of human intervention. However, integrating the investments done and the requiring costs needed in the current state (involved by maintaining the forest plantations, suitability of land for agriculture, irrigation, fertilizers etc.) the total benefits for humans are reduced in comparison with the reference state. This conclusion make room for different management alternatives within the area.
Figure 1: Ecosystem services maps for reference and actual state in the long term socio-ecological research site of Braila Islands
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