Socio-economic or environmental benefits from pondscapes? Deriving stakeholder preferences using analytic hierarchy process and compositional data analysis.

Ponds occupy a large share of standing water worldwide and play an important role in providing various ecosystem services. There are concerted efforts of the European Union either to create new ponds, or to restore and preserve existing ponds as nature-based solutions to provide benefits to ecosystem and human well-being. As part of the EU PONDERFUL project, selected pondscapes (i.e. landscapes of ponds) in eight different countries - hereafter "demo-sites", are studied to comprehensively understand their characteristics and their efficiency to provide ecosystem services. In addition, the needs and knowledge of stakeholders who own, work, research, or benefit from the pondscapes are also important, because of their capabilities to create, manage and develop the pondscapes. Therefore, we established connection with stakeholders to study their preferences and visions on the pondscapes. Using the analytic hierarchy process, this study shows that in general stakeholders in the European and Turkish demo-sites prefer environmental benefits to economic benefits, while stakeholders in the Uruguayan demo-sites rank the economic benefits higher. More specifically, in the European and Turkish demo-sites, the biodiversity benefits, i.e. life-cycle maintenance, habitat and gene pool protection, receive the highest ranking among all groups. On the other hand, stakeholders at the Uruguayan demo-sites rank provisioning benefits as the most important, because many ponds in Uruguayan demo-sites are being used for agricultural purposes. Understanding those preferences helps policy makers to address the needs of stakeholders more correctly, when considering any action or policy for the pondscapes.

Perils of life on the edge: Climatic threats to global diversity patterns of wetland macroinvertebrates.

Climate change is rapidly driving global biodiversity declines. How wetland macroinvertebrate assemblages are responding is unclear, a concern given their vital function in these ecosystems. Using a data set from 769 minimally impacted depressional wetlands across the globe (467 temporary and 302 permanent), we evaluated how temperature and precipitation (average, range, variability) affects the richness and beta diversity of 144 macroinvertebrate families. To test the effects of climatic predictors on macroinvertebrate diversity, we fitted generalized additive mixed-effects models (GAMM) for family richness and generalized dissimilarity models (GDMs) for total beta diversity. We found non-linear relationships between family richness, beta diversity, and climate. Maximum temperature was the main climatic driver of wetland macroinvertebrate richness and beta diversity, but precipitation seasonality was also important. Assemblage responses to climatic variables also depended on wetland water permanency. Permanent wetlands from warmer regions had higher family richness than temporary wetlands. Interestingly, wetlands in cooler and dry-warm regions had the lowest taxonomic richness, but both kinds of wetlands supported unique assemblages. Our study suggests that climate change will have multiple effects on wetlands and their macroinvertebrate diversity, mostly via increases in maximum temperature, but also through changes in patterns of precipitation. The most vulnerable wetlands to climate change are likely those located in warm-dry regions, where entire macroinvertebrate assemblages would be extirpated. Montane and high-latitude wetlands (i.e., cooler regions) are also vulnerable to climate change, but we do not expect entire extirpations at the family level.