Ecological Indicators 21 (2012) 30–38 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecological Indicators jo ur n al homep ag e: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolind Original article A contribution towards a transfer of the ecosystem service concept to landscape planning using landscape metrics Susanne Frank ∗ , Christine Fürst, Lars Koschke, Franz Makeschin Department of Soil Science and Site Ecology, Dresden University of Technology, Pienner Str. 19, 01737 Tharandt, Germany a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 3 December 2010 Received in revised form 24 March 2011 Accepted 13 April 2011 Keywords: Ecosystem service assessment Landscape metrics Landscape planning Landscape structure Pimp Your Landscape a b s t r a c t The article introduces a conceptual approach for how to enhance the assessment of ecosystem services with regard to landscape structural aspects. Therefore, we have implemented landscape metrics in the cellular automaton based software “Pimp Your Landscape”. Using the example of the service “ecological functioning”, we tested the potential of our approach to improve the understanding of how landscape structure contributes to the provision of ecosystem services. As a test case, we simulated different afforestation scenarios in a model region in North-Eastern Germany. A major finding for landscape planning was that, without the inclusion of landscape metrics, the actual potential of our poorly structured model region with a large proportion of agricultural areas would be overestimated. In contrast, the benefits gained from afforestation strategies, which aim at improving aspects such as biotope connectivity at the landscape level, would become less obvious. We conclude that our approach can contribute to a more realistic appraisal of the potential for land- scapes to provide ecosystem services beyond the contribution of single ecosystem services or—in our case—land cover classes. We therefore plan to expand our approach to other ecosystem services as well, where landscape structural aspects, such as cultural services (for aesthetic value), are essential. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In the international debate on Climate Change impact assess- ment, landscape management, and biodiversity conservation, the concept of ecosystem services has become a central issue. Many studies focus on the natural resources of the environment for providing ecosystem services and on the relationship between ecosystem services and their value for human well being (de Groot et al., 2010). The progressively rising demand on these natural resources makes protection of ecosystems and biodiversity essen- tial (MA, 2005). Thus, nature conservationists and environmental scientists hope to communicate the importance of ecosystems and the worthiness of maintaining their present condition and function by translating their value into ecosystem services. Usually, only marketable and tradable ecosystem services are taken into account in decision-making concerning planning and management of resources (MA, 2005). Consequently, the consider- ation of provisioning services is satisfying, but the consideration of regulating services is not satisfying. Cultural services are almost not taken into account, as they are difficult to translate into financial values. Also, the contribution of ecosystems to national economy is supposed to be significantly higher than the measurable monetary ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 0 35203 38 31377, fax: +49 0 35203 38 31388. E-mail address: Susanne.Frank@tu-dresden.de (S. Frank). value (Beck et al., 2006). Furthermore, environmental manage- ment has mostly focused on individual ecosystems (Potschin and Haines-Young, 2001). Nowadays, environmental management is increasingly confronted with the problem of managing and plan- ning entire landscapes which often consist of complex, interacting mosaics of different habitat patches and ecosystems (Lindenmayer et al., 2008). For a more realistic and holistic appraisal of ecosys- tem services provision, both provision of ecosystem services by specific ecosystems and the additional benefit from the pattern of various ecosystems/land cover types on landscape scale (i.e. land- scape structure) must be taken into account (Burkhard et al., 2010). For example, high heterogeneity of land cover types in a region might have a positive impact on services such as aesthetics, which are difficult to assess. However, currently it is not possible to con- sider such aspects in a standardized way in landscape planning. The here presented method could contribute to a better transfer of knowledge on how and why ecosystem services are provided and which impacts might result from changing the landscape structure in landscape and regional development planning. A possible approach to account for spatial patterns and their impact on landscape structure related ecosystem services might be the use of landscape metrics (LMs) (Feld et al., 2007). LMs help to mathematically assess landscape structures and can give valuable information to improve the assessment of the ecological function- ing, economic wealth, and aesthetic value of a region (Frank et al., 2010c; Fürst et al., in preparation; Uuemaa et al., 2009). LMs can 1470-160X/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2011.04.027