Leena Kopperoinen

Finnish Environment Institute | ymparisto · Built Environment Solutions Unit / Urban Nature

Abstract Urban experimental ecosystem accounting pilot in the Nordic cities Urban green and blue areas offer multiple ecosystem services, including recreational opportunities, places foreducation, stormwater runoff mitigation, and local climate regulation, that support urban resilience and contribute to the well-being and quality of life of urban...

River networks are among Earth’s most threatened hot-spots of biodiversity and provide key ecosystem services (e.g., supply drinking water and food, climate regulation) essential to sustaining human well-being. Climate change and increased human water use are causing more rivers and streams to dry, with devastating impacts on biodiversity and ecosy...

Kunnilla ja kaupungeilla on merkittävä rooli ilmastonmuutoksen hillinnässä ja siihen sopeutumisessa. Etenkin suomalaisessa ja pohjoismaisessa kontekstissa kuntien päätäntävallassa on monenlaisia ilmastopäästöihin ja ylipäänsä kestävyystavoitteiden saavuttamiseen vaikuttavia asioita (Terämä ym. 2019). Monet näistä liittyvät kaavoitukseen ja sen kerr...

Achieving sustainable development as an inclusive societal process in rural landscapes, and sustainability in terms of functional green infrastructures for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services, are wicked challenges. Competing claims from various sectors call for evidence-based adaptive collaborative governance. Leveraging such approach...

Context Maintaining functional green infrastructures (GIs) require evidence-based knowledge about historic and current states and trends of representative land cover types. Objectives We address: (1) the long-term loss and transformation of potential natural forest vegetation; (2) the effects of site productivity on permanent forest loss and emerg...

This paper analyses and compares a set of case studies on ecosystem services (ES) mapping and assessment with the purpose of formulating lessons learned and recommendations. Fourteen case studies were selected during the EU Horizon 2020 “Coordination and Support Action” ESMERALDA to represent different policy- and decision-making processes througho...

Context Several case studies investigated the role of ecosystem services in participatory planning processes. However, no systematic study exists that cuts across a large number of empirical cases to identify the implications of using ecosystem services in participatory planning. Objectives This study explores the potential of the ecosystem servic...

Scientific advancements on Green Infrastructure (GI) and Ecosystem Services (ES) have been conducted by experts from several disciplines such as landscape ecology, landscape architecture and, more recently, regional and urban planning. However, there are still difficulties in defining and operationalizing GI and ES within planning. This paper explo...

New European Union level scenarios have been developed in the FP7 project OpenNESS to fill a thematic gap in existing broad-scale environmental scenarios to assess the uncertainties and risks of different drivers of change for natural capital and ecosystem service provision. The scenarios are aiming at applicability for science and policy-making at...

Interactions between people and ecological systems, through leisure or tourism activities, form a complex socio-ecological spatial network. The analysis of the benefits people derive from their interactions with nature—also referred to as cultural ecosystem services (CES)—enables a better understanding of these socio-ecological systems. In the age...

File containing the manuscript supporting information. This file includes one table (Table A: Summary statistics of the case study sites) and 9 figures (Fig A: Screenshot of the interactive web application; Fig B: Positions of the geolocated Flickr photographs; Fig C: Influence of the parameters in the identification of the Flickr user’s place of r...

The European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 Coordination and Support Action ESMERALDA aimed at developing guidance and a flexible methodology for Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES) to support the EU member states in the implementation of the EU Biodiversity Strategy’s Target 2 Action 5. ESMERALDA’s key tasks included network cr...

http://rdcu.be/kJor Arguments in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of biodiversity policy frame conservation in a range of ways and express interests that can be conflicting. Policy processes are cyclic and iterative by nature and as policies are constantly reformulated, argumentation has an important role at each policy stage. In thi...

Interactions between people and ecological systems, through leisure or tourism activities, form a complex socio-ecological spatial network. The analysis of the benefits people derive from their interactions with nature - also referred to as cultural ecosystem services (CES) - enables a better understanding of these socio-ecological systems. In the...

This report provides an overview of the main social methods for mapping and assessment of ecosystem services. It addresses the challenge of improving the applicability of these methods with specific examples, particularly with respect to the MAES process and the ESMERALDA case studies. In this context, the term “mapping” is used to mean the descrip...

The ecosystem service (ES) concept is becoming mainstream in policy and planning, but operational influence on practice is seldom reported. Here, we report the practitioners' perspectives on the practical implementation of the ES concept in 27 case studies. A standardised anonymous survey (n=246), was used, focusing on the science-practice interact...

As environmental challenges and their management are increasingly recognised as complex and uncertain, the concept of ecosystem services has emerged from within scientific communities and is gaining influence within policy communities. To better understand how this concept can be turned into practice we examine knowledge needs from the perspective...

The Ecosystem Services (ES) concept highlights the varied contributions the environment provides to humans and there are a wide range of methods/tools available to assess ES. However, in real-world decision contexts a single tool is rarely sufficient and methods must be combined to meet practitioner needs. Here, results from the OpenNESS project ar...

Environmental justice sheds light on the distributive and procedural aspects of planning and decision-making. We examined the challenges arising from the perspective of environmental justice on multi-level and participatory environmental governance by exploring the governance of aquatic environments in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. We found three...

As the ecosystem service concept has become more widely recognised, so the number of biophysical, socio-cultural and monetary methods available to assess ecosystem services has increased. There is relatively little guidance on how to select and combine these methods into hybrid approaches that address policy purposes. Based on experiences from 27 c...

Ecosystem service (ES) spatial modelling is a key component of the integrated assessments designed to support policies and management practices aiming at environmental sustainability. ESTIMAP ("Ecosystem Service Mapping Tool") is a collection of spatially explicit models, originally developed to support policies at a European scale. We based our an...

Spatial planning has to deal with trade-offs between various stakeholders’ wishes and needs as part of planning and management of landscapes, natural resources and/or biodiversity. To make ecosystem services (ES) trade-off research more relevant for spatial planning, we propose an analytical framework, which puts stakeholders, their land-use/manage...

A range of methods are available for assessing ecosystem services. Methods differ in their aims; from mapping and modelling the supply and demand of ecosystem services to appraising their economic and non-economic importance through valuation techniques. Comprehensive guidance for the selection of appropriate ecosystem service assessment methods th...

To shed light on fair blue urbanism, we studied the demands, obstacles and opportunities as well as knowledge needs of various citizen groups living in Helsinki Metropolitan Area. The perspectives were identified and explored by experts using an innovative ‘role chair’ method of opinion elicitation. The responses, aggregated as clusters, highlight...

The promise that ecosystem service assessments will contribute to better decision-making is not yet proven. We analyse how knowledge on ecosystem services is actually used to inform land and water management in 22 case studies covering different social-ecological systems in European and Latin American countries. None of the case studies reported in...

Understanding uncertainties and risks can be considered to be the main motivation behind environmental scenario studies to assess potential economic, environmental, social or technical developments and their expected consequences for society and environment. The scenario study presented in this paper was designed to contribute to the question of ho...

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) bind elements between social and ecological concepts. They are seen as nature’s intangible benefits related to human perceptions, attitudes and beliefs. People obtain spiritual enrichment, cognitive development, reflection, recreation and aesthetic experiences from ecosystems (Table 1). People’s perceptions can dif...

English abstract: Both compact urban form and urban nature benefit residents of the city and the society. That’s why infill development should be done so that while creating eco-efficient compact urban form, the natural values and benefits produced by urban green spaces are preserved. Especially, planning cities that already have a high population...

Final report of the ELMA project, in which ecological connections, nature tourism and quiet areas in the regional development and regional planning of Kainuu Region, Finland, are assessed and mapped. Available only in Finnish.

Background The current political agenda aims to promote active environments and physical activity while commuting to work, but research on it has provided mixed results. This study examines whether the proximity of green space and people’s residence in different travel-related urban zones contributes to commuting physical activity. Methods Populati...

Spatial planning is concerned with spatial impacts of decision-making in sector policies and actions in public and private sectors. It aims to consider and coordinate these impacts in a way that leads to sustainable spatial development. Up to now, the consideration of biodiversity and ecosystem services in spatial planning has been based on environ...

The number of collaborative initiatives between scientists and volunteers (i.e., citizen science) is increasing across many research fields. The promise of societal transformation together with scientific breakthroughs contributes to the current popularity of citizen science (CS) in the policy domain. We examined the transformative capacity of citi...

The aim of this report is to illustrate by means of a series of case studies the implementation of mapping and assessment of forest ecosystem services in different contexts and geographical levels. Methodological aspects, data issues, approaches, limitations, gaps and further steps for improvement are analysed for providing good practices and decis...

The Green Belt of Fennoscandia forms an ecological network that spans from the Barents Sea all the way to the Baltic Sea. It is a part of the European Green Belt which runs through Europe, starting from the Barents Region and ending in the Balkans. The main body of the Green Belt of Fennoscandia consists of existing and planned protected areas near...

The concept of " Green Infrastructure " (GI) is gaining political momentum and has been rapidly introduced in both planning theory and policy, especially in US and Europe (see Lennon, 2014). Yet, it does not have a single widely recognised or accepted definition (Wright, 2011). The term has been adopted by various disciplines (e.g., land conservati...

This report presents the results from the research project National Assessment of the Economics of Ecosystem Services in Finland (TEEB Finland). This pioneering project aimed to initiate a systematic national process for the integration of ecosystem services and related biodiversity (i.e. natural capital) into all levels of decision-making. TEEB fo...

The aim of this report is to illustrate by means of a series of case studies the implementation of mapping and assessment of forest ecosystem services in different contexts and geographical levels. Methodological aspects, data issues, approaches, limitations, gaps and further steps for improvement are analysed for providing good practices and decis...

Ekosysteemit tarjoavat ihmisille ravintoa, raaka-aineita, virkistystä, tulvavesien hallintaa ja monia muita hyötyjä. Hyvinvointimme perustuu näihin luonnosta saataviin ekosysteemipalveluihin. Viher- ja vesialueiden terveet ja toimivat ekosysteemit turvaavat myös luonnon monimuotoisuutta. Toimivat ekosysteemit voivat tarjota luontoperusteisia ratka...

In Finnish only: Metsissä ulkoillaan, niitä ihaillaan ja niissä tarjotaan matkailupalveluja. Niitä suojellaan, hoidetaan ja niistä kiistellään. Suomen luonto on kokonaisuus, jonka käyttö herättää keskustelua. Kirjassa eri tieteenalojen tutkijat tarkastelevat metsiä yleistajuisesti muun muassa virkistyksen, maiseman ja talouden näkökulmista. Kirja...

Green infrastructure (GI) is a strategic planning instrument to achieve sustainable development. The main functions of GI are to protect biodiversity and safeguard and enhance the provision of ecosystem services (ES). In this paper we present the development of a semi-quantitative place-based method, aiming at assessing GI based on the provision po...

Research on ecosystem services mapping and valuing has increased significantly in recent years. However, compared to provisioning and regulating services, cultural ecosystem services have not yet been fully integrated into operational frameworks. One reason for this is that transdisciplinarity is required to address the issue, since by definition c...

10.1016/j.ecolind.2014.04.018 Research on ecosystem services mapping and valuing has increased significantly in recent years. However, compared to provisioning and regulating services, cultural ecosystem services have not yet been fully integrated into operational frameworks. One reason for this is that transdisciplinarity is required to addres...

Report provides a synthesis of argumentation analysis in real-world cases in "multi-level biodiversity governance", investigated within the BESAFE project. The following broad research questions guided the synthesis of argumentation analysis in the case studies: - Which (different types of) arguments can be identified at different levels and units...

Abstract of the book: Due to the lack of success in climate change mitigation efforts, the importance of adaptation is becoming more and more apparent and is now one of the main imperatives of international research and action. However, research on adaptation is mostly not directly applicable to adaptation policy or practice, leaving a gap between...

Mapping and visualization of ecosystem services (ES) - and especially the trade-offs between them - are among the greatest current challenges within ES research and its applications in policy, decision-making, and land use planning. In our ES mapping method, we combine qualitative expert data and over 20 quantitative GIS datasets in order to assess...

Integration of ecosystem services into spatial planning processes is presumed to advance new ways of integrating knowledge, consider the ecological functions and protect biodiversity. To understand how the arguments relying on ecosystem service approaches make their way to practice, it is useful to analyse real-world planning processes where integr...

In this study we define the spatial allocation for the value of recreation ecosystem services in Finland. The Finnish national recreation inventory, a representative survey data of Finnish recreationists and their recreation visits (last close-to-home visit and overnight nature trip), allows us to estimate the annual number of recreation trips to v...