Ecosystem service bundles along the urban-rural gradient: Insights for landscape planning and management

- Both the supply and demand of ecosystem service (ES) bundles are assessed and mapped.
- The research considers 5 ES and 11 indicators for the Barcelona metropolitan region.
- Results show significant associations among ES, both at the supply and demand sides.
- Five distinct ES supply-demand bundle types are identified and characterized.
- We call for combining land sharing and sparing strategies for enhanced ES delivery.

A key challenge of landscape planning and management is coping with multiple ecosystem service (ES) potentials and needs in complex social-ecological systems such as urban regions. However, few studies have analyzed both the supply and demand sides of ES bundles, i.e., sets of associated ES that repeatedly appear together across time or space. This paper advances a framework to identify, map and assess ES bundles from a supply-demand approach to inform landscape planning and management. The framework is applied to the Barcelona metropolitan region, Spain, covering five ES and using eleven spatial indicators. Each indicator was quantified and mapped at the municipal level (n = 164) combining different proxy- and process-based models. Our results show significant associations among ES, both at the supply and demand sides. Further, we identified five distinct ES supply-demand bundle types and characterized them based on their specific ES relationships and their main underlying social-ecological conditions. From our findings, we contend that land sharing strategies should be prioritized in urban and agricultural areas to increase landscape multifunctionality while assuring the conservation of large periurban forest areas that are critical for delivering a wide range of local ES highly demanded by the urban population.