Ecosystem Services for Supporting Coastal and Marine Resources Management, an Example from the Adriatic Sea (Central Mediterranean Sea)

Abstract

Ecosystem Services (ESs) assessment is increasingly being considered as the constitutive metric to embrace the social, ecological, and economic spheres. Spatially explicit ES assessments can integrate and standardize different types of information making them comparable. In this context, a multiple coastal and marine ES assessment in the Northern-Central Adriatic Sea was carried out, considering seven ESs. Two cultural (tourism and recreational boating), two regulating (carbon sequestration and coastal erosion prevention potential), and three provisioning (mussel, whitefish aquaculture, and industrial fishery) ESs have been measured. Spatial (dis)concordance among them has been measured to suggest sustainable human uses of ecosystems, through ESs capacity, and flow conceptualization. Results show spatial agreement for capacities while contrasting results emerged from the analysis across flows and of the capacity-flow balance. The actual use of ESs (flow) can exceed the ability of ecosystems to potentially generate them (capacity) depleting the Adriatic ES set. The analysis of the relationship between multiple capacity and multiple flow revealed the presence of a geographical pattern and areas of high, medium, and low ability to provide ESs across the study area. This information can be useful in the context of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), and for the implementation of the Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) in the Northern-Central Adriatic Sea.

Keywords: ecosystem services, multiple ES assessment, marine area, coastal area, Adriatic Sea