Shifting spatial priorities for ecosystem services in Europe following land use change

Shifts in priority areas are driven not only by local land use change, but also by land use change in the wider landscape, through connectivity effects and shifts in the relative importance of sites. The real management challenge lies in maintaining ecosystem services within landscapes where production and conservation objectives need to be reconciled and priority areas are affected by both local and landscape wide changes in land use. Moreover, we show that land use change has both local positive and negative effects on ecosystem service priorities, indicating that prioritization studies should not solely incorporate negative effects of land use change.