Bundling ecosystem services in Denmark: Trade-offs and synergies in a cultural landscape

We made a spatial analysis of 11 ecosystem services at a 10 km × 10 km grid scale covering most of Denmark. Our objective was to describe their spatial distribution and interactions and also to analyze whether they formed specific bundle types on a regional scale in the Danish cultural landscape. We found clustered distribution patterns of ecosystem services across the country. There was a significant tendency for trade-offs between on the one hand cultural and regulating services and on the other provisioning services, and we also found the potential of regulating and cultural services to form synergies. We identified six distinct ecosystem service bundle types, indicating multiple interactions at a landscape level. The bundle types showed specialized areas of agricultural production, high provision of cultural services at the coasts, multifunctional mixed-use bundle types around urban areas and forest recreation bundle types with high hunting potential. Thus we found that the distributions were both determined by historical and current socio-ecological influences. This gives a better understanding of the interactions between multiple services in the landscape and the way the landscape has been managed. However, the number, types and spatial distribution of such bundles are quite sensitive to the individual ecosystem services selected and the input data available to define these services. This should be taken into consideration in further research on how to utilize the existing synergies and the mitigating potential of trade-offs for a more holistic approach to landscape-scale ecosystem service management.