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AbstractNature's contributions to people (NCP) are contributions of natural capital to people's quality of life, being at the center of political and societal concern. There is an increasing recognition of businesses' responsibility toward conservation and responsible use of natural capital. In this exploratory study, we identified gains of corporate investments on natural capital, focusing on LIPOR, a waste management company that closed and converted a dumpsite into a multifunctional Urban Green Space. We gathered and reviewed available data and concluded that there are €113,020,478 in NCP benefits, from €7,760,032 business investments by LIPOR, roughly representing a positive cost–benefit ratio of 14, over 2 decades. Results suggest that well‐targeted business investments in natural capital can provide high rates of return associated with people's benefits. Our case study contributes to fulfilling a gap in business literature by deliberately linking rates of investment on natural capital with the valuation of NCP benefits.

In their paper entitled "Wildfires as an ecosystem service", Pausas and Keeley (2019) summarize the benefits generated by – as well as the evolutionary and socioecological importance of – wildfires for humankind. Although we recognize the importance of wildfires in such a context, we argue that presenting wildfire per se as an ecosystem service is conceptually incorrect and can be misleading for policy makers and resource managers. Throughout their paper, the authors repeatedly refer to (wild)fire as a potential provider of multiple ecosystem services (and not as an ecosystem service itself, as indicated in their article's title). We believe that this is more than a dispute over semantics, for such a contradiction could lead to misperceptions about the definition of the term " ecosystem services", which is especially concerning in light of its real-world applications to fire management. ; ÂS received support from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through PhD grant SFRH/BD/ 132838/2017, funded by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, and by the European Social Fund–Operational Program Human Capital within the 2014–2020 EU Strategic Framework. AR is funded by Xunta de Galicia (post-doctoral fellowship ED481B2016/084-0). This research was developed as part of the project FirESmart (PCIF/MOG/0083/2017), which received funding from the FCT. The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

'Regime shift' has emerged as a key concept in the environmental sciences. The concept has roots in complexity science and its ecological applications, and is increasingly applied to intertwined social and ecological phenomena. Yet what exactly is a regime shift? We explore this question at three nested levels. First, we propose a broad, contingent, multi-perspective epistemological basis for the concept, seeking to build bridges between its complexity theory origins and critiques from science studies, political ecology, and environmental history. Second, we define the concept in a way that is consistent with this epistemology, building on previous work on speed, scale, stickiness, and interrelationships, but also emphasising human perceptions and rhetorical uses of the notion. Third, we propose a novel typology of the ways in which the regime shift concept is used in analysing social–environmental phenomena in geography and beyond. These uses are categorised along two axes. On the one side, we distinguish between description of past or present changes and normative prescriptions for the future. On the other side, we distinguish between whether the focus is on material shifts (social and ecological) or conceptual shifts (discourses and ideas). We illustrate the typology with reference to social–environmental changes in landscapes around the world that are dominated by plantations or the widespread naturalisation of Australian Acacia species. We conclude that the regime shift concept is a boundary object with value as both an analytical and communicative tool in addressing social–environmental challenges.

Identifying the key factors driving invasion processes is crucial for designing and implementing appropriate management strategies. In fact, the importance of (model-based) prevention and early detection was highlighted in the recent European Union regulation on Invasive Alien Species. Models based on abundance estimates for different age/size classes would represent a significant improvement relative to the more usual models based only on species' occurrence data. Here, we evaluate the relative contribution of different environmental drivers to the spatial patterns of abundance of several height classes (or life-stages) of invasive tree populations at the regional scale, using a data-driven hierarchical modelling approach. A framework for modelling life-stages to obtain spatial projections of their potential occurrence or abundance has not been formalized before. We used Acacia dealbata (Silver-wattle) as a test species in northwest of Portugal, a heavily invaded region, and applied a multimodel inference to test the importance of various environmental drivers in explaining the abundance patterns of five plant height classes in local landscape mosaics. The ensemble of height classes is considered here as a proxy for population dynamics, life-stages and age of adult trees. In this test with A. dealbata, we used detailed field data on population height structure and calibrated an independent model for each height class. We found evidence to support our hypothesis that the distribution of height classes is mostly influenced by distinct factors operating at different scales. The spatial projections which resulted from several height class models provide an overview of population structure and invasion dynamics considering various life-stages, that is widely used in biodiversity and invasion research. The approach proposed here provides a framework to guide forest management to deal more effectively with plant invasions. It allows to test the effects of key invasion factors (depending on the focal species and on data availability) and supports the spatial identification of suitable areas for invasive species' occurrence while also accounting for the structural complexity of invasive species populations, thereby anticipating future invasion dynamics. The approach thus constitutes a step forward for establishing management actions at appropriate spatial scales and for focusing on earlier stages of invasion and their respective driving factors (regeneration niche), thereby enhancing the efficiency of control actions on major forest invaders.

Identification of ecosystem services, i.e. the contributions that ecosystems make to human well-being, has proven instrumental in galvanising public and political support for safeguarding biodiversity and its benefits to people. Here we synthe-sise the global evidence on ecosystem services provided and disrupted by freshwater bivalves, a heterogenous group of >1200 species, including some of the most threatened (in Unionida) and invasive (e.g. Dreissena polymorpha) taxa globally. Our systematic literature review resulted in a data set of 904 records from 69 countries relating to 24 classes of provision-ing (N = 189), cultural (N = 491) and regulating (N = 224) services following the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES). Prominent ecosystem services included (i) the provisioning of food, materials and medicinal products, (ii) knowledge acquisition (e.g. on water quality, past environments and historical societies), ornamental and other cultural contributions, and (iii) the filtration, sequestration, storage and/or transformation of biological and physico-chemical water properties. About 9% of records provided evidence for the disruption rather than provision of ecosystem services. Synergies and trade-offs of ecosystem services were observed. For instance, water filtration by freshwater bivalves can be beneficial for the cultural service 'biomonitoring', while negatively or positively affecting food consumption or human recreation. Our evidence base spanned a total of 91 genera and 191 species, dominated by Unionida (55% of records, 76% of species), Veneroida (21 and 9%, respectively; mainly Corbicula spp.) and Myoida (20 and 4%, respectively; mainly Dreissena spp.). About one third of records, predominantly from Europe and the Amer-icas, related to species that were non-native to the country of study. The majority of records originated from Asia (35%), with available evidence for 23 CICES classes, as well as Europe (29%) and North America (23%), where research was largely focused ...

Identification of ecosystem services, i.e. the contributions that ecosystems make to human well-being, has proven instru-mental in galvanising public and political support for safeguarding biodiversity and its benefits to people. Here we synthe-sise the global evidence on ecosystem services provided and disrupted by freshwater bivalves, a heterogenous group of>1200 species, including some of the most threatened (in Unionida) and invasive (e.g.Dreissena polymorpha) taxa globally.Our systematic literature review resulted in a data set of 904 records from 69 countries relating to 24 classes of provision-ing (N=189), cultural (N=491) and regulating (N=224) services following the Common International Classification ofEcosystem Services (CICES). Prominent ecosystem services included (i) the provisioning of food, materials and medicinalproducts, (ii) knowledge acquisition (e.g. on water quality, past environments and historical societies), ornamental andother cultural contributions, and (iii) thefiltration, sequestration, storage and/or transformation of biological andphysico-chemical water properties. About 9% of records provided evidence for the disruption rather than provision ofecosystem services. Synergies and trade-offs of ecosystem services were observed. For instance, waterfiltration by fresh-water bivalves can be beneficial for the cultural service'biomonitoring', while negatively or positively affecting food consumption or human recreation. Our evidence base spanned a total of 91 genera and 191 species, dominated byUnionida (55% of records, 76% of species), Veneroida (21 and 9%, respectively; mainlyCorbiculaspp.) and Myoida(20 and 4%, respectively; mainlyDreissenaspp.). About one third of records, predominantly from Europe and the Amer-icas, related to species that were non-native to the country of study. The majority of records originated from Asia (35%),with available evidence for 23 CICES classes, as well as Europe (29%) and North America (23%), where research waslargely focused on'biomonitoring'. ...

Climate change is expected to have strong social-ecological implications, with global but especially regional and local challenges. To assess the climatic vulnerability of a given territory, it is necessary to evaluate its exposure to climate change and its adaptive capacity. This study describes the development of an Action Plan for Adapting to Climate Change in the Tâmega and Sousa Region, a mountainous inter-municipal community in the North of Portugal. The goals were to identify the main impacts of climate change on water resources, agriculture, forests, biodiversity, and socioeconomic sectors, as well as to develop a plan, merging local and scientific knowledge through a transdisciplinary lens. This study describes an approach that combines modelling methods, applied in the different sectors, and participatory methods, based on the analysis of the perceptions of local actors. Results indicate that the target region will experience a generalized increase in temperature and a decrease in precipitation, which will negatively impact all studied social-ecological dimensions. Overall, local business and institutional agents perceive the primary and tourism sectors as the most vulnerable in the region. The described framework demonstrates the engagement process between relevant scientific experts and local practitioners, as well as how it is critical to understand the impacts of climate change and to support the co-design of an adaptation plan, which in turn can guide political and economic decision-making towards effective implementation of the plan. In addition, the difficulties and challenges encountered during this process are discussed to support future plans and strategies for local adaptation.