Assessing conflicts between winter recreational activities and grouse species.

Mountain environments provide habitats for many wild animal species and are of great importance to recreational activities. In the European Alps, winter recreation activities such as ski mountaineering are becoming increasingly popular, which may lead more often to disturbance of Alpine wildlife. Assessment of ski mountaineering activities and related potential conflict zones is needed to implement protection measures and to guide skiers towards nature-friendly behaviour in sensitive locations. Yet basic data regarding frequencies of ski mountaineers is still missing at regional scale. For the Region of the Tyrol (Austria), this study therefore aimed to advance methods of assessing ski mountaineering activities for use in the spatial analysis of conflict zones with grouse species. We overlaid high-resolution information on the spatial and temporal distribution of ski mountaineers from crowd-sourced data (Strava) with distribution maps of capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus L.) and black grouse (Tetrao tetrix L.). Our results indicate that ski mountaineering activities affected 10.3% of the distribution area of black grouse and 8.6% of the distribution area of capercaillie. The raw crowd-sourced data was pre-processed with local information on skiing resorts, cross-country trails and infrastructure and use of the tested method was validated, with good spatial resolution (0.076 km2 per minimum mapping unit) for large study areas. We identified four intensity classes of ski mountaineering activity, which were randomly distributed in the study area. The spatial distribution of ski mountaineering activities showed an accumulation of activities in the south of the Inn valley. Our results could provide a valuable basis for developing mitigation measures and strategies in order to reduce the disturbance of Alpine wildlife by ski mountaineering.

Integrating supply, flow and demand to enhance the understanding of interactions among multiple ecosystem services.

A comprehensive understanding of the relationships among ecosystem services (ES) is important for landscape management, decision-making and policy development, but interactions among multiple ES remain under-researched. In particular, earlier studies often did not clearly distinguish between supply, flow and demand. Furthermore, the underlying mechanisms in complex socio-ecological systems remain less examined. In this study, we therefore aimed to assess interactions among eight key ES, adopting a multistep approach. For all ES, we mapped ES supply, flow and demand at the municipality level in the Alpine Space area. We applied correlation analysis and cluster analysis in order to analyse the linkages between ES and to identify bundles of ES. We used random forest analysis to explain the distribution of the ES bundles and to identify important drivers based on socio-ecological variables (e.g. land use/cover, climate, topography and population density). Our results demonstrate that trade-offs and synergies varied greatly for supply, flow and demand. We identified five ES bundles, distinguishing hotspots of ES supply and demand. Twelve socio-ecological variables correctly predicted the membership of 81% of the municipalities to the ES bundles. Our results suggest that a limited number of socio-ecological variables can explain the majority of the distribution of ES bundles in the landscape. Considering the spatial relationships between mountain regions and their surrounding lowlands, regional and transnational governance frameworks need to connect areas of multiple ES supply to areas of ES demand, and should account for the different levels and types of ES relationships.