Heterogeneity in Ecosystem Services: Multi-Scale Carbon Management in Tropical Forest Landscapes

Abstract

Landscape management is increasingly focused on trade-offs among various ecosystem services. For example, while clearing forests may produce timber and provide land for agriculture, it also releases significant amounts of carbon to the atmosphere, influencing the global climate system. Evaluating the tradeoffs among ecosystem services is made difficult by the inherent heterogeneity of social–ecological systems at many levels of ecological (and social) organization. For example, the provisioning of ecosystem services may change with the size of organisms, the species composition of communities, and with variation in landscape pattern through time. In this chapter, we introduce common methods for estimating the amount of carbon stored in forests and explore the implications of spatial and temporal heterogeneity for carbon management at the landscape level. Assuming little prior knowledge of these issues, these exercises will enable students to.