Ecosystem services articles from across Nature Portfolio

The use of widely available groundwater and remote sensing data allows the identification of depth to groundwater thresholds to maintain water-dependent vegetation health.

Ecosystem services provided by coral reefs to coastal communities can depend on upstream land-use change activities such as forest restoration. This study assessed the social and ecological benefits provided by different watershed interventions designed at regional and national scales in Mesoamerica.

Non-native species may pose a threat not only to native biodiversity, but also to the provision of ecosystem services. Here, the authors quantify the potential impact of invasive species on a set of ecosystem services across Europe.

The use of widely available groundwater and remote sensing data allows the identification of depth to groundwater thresholds to maintain water-dependent vegetation health.

When the substrate for ecological interactions is the river network, the emerging universality of form is reflected in its function as ecological corridor, with implications.

Ongoing climate change has the potential to reduce people’s direct experiences with nature, leading to or further exacerbating the ‘extinction of experience’. We argue that understanding these impacts is crucial, as the extinction of experience can have adverse consequences for both humans and the natural environment.

We present an interdisciplinary conceptual framework of urban agriculture and synthesize its social–ecological effects across scales. Using those theoretical foundations, we proposed a multiphase developmental pathway for scaling up urban agriculture, including dynamics, processes, accelerators and feedback loops, which elucidated key considerations associated with achieving transformative change in urban regions.

The majority of power generated by photovoltaic energy infrastructure is derived from ground-mounted solar arrays that prioritize energy production, minimize operating costs and, at best, accommodate limited ecosystem services. We argue that co-prioritizing ecosystem services and energy generation using an ecologically informed, ‘ecovoltaics’ approach to solar array design and operation will have multiple benefits for climate, biodiversity and the restoration of degraded lands.