Utilizing ecosystem services for spatial decision-making with trade-off&synergy analysis in Istanbul

A comprehensive understanding of relationships among ecosystem services (ESs) is critical to avoid complex trade-offs and capitalize their synergies. Incorporating the ES concept in spatial decision-making can be an opportunity for enhancing the capacity of landscape management, spatial planning and policy development. In this study, the trade-offs&synergies relationships among selected ESs, namely climate regulation, crop production, recreation & eco-tourism are assessed for four different scenarios: Climate Change Adaptation, Maximum Conservation, Business-as-Usual and Maximum Development in the metropolitan area of Istanbul, developed and modeled by using InVEST tools and ArcGIS. The dominant relationship is trade-off in the Climate Change Adaptation and Business-as-Usual scenarios, while it is synergistic in the Maximum Conservation and Maximum Development scenarios. These results show that different scenarios cause different patterns of land use/land cover change and hence trade-offs and synergies arise. This information can be useful in spatial decision-making to promote all as environmental sustainability, public benefit and enhancing the capability of spatial decision-making process development. Finally, the practical integration of ESs trade-offs&synergies in spatial decision-making is discussed and the opportunities and challenges of the integration are addressed by utilizing spatial decision-making to recognize and avoid undesirable trade-offs and enhance synergies.