Editorial: Best practices for mapping ecosystem services

Plurality in ecosystem service definitions and applications has resulted in a wide variety of methods to assess and map ecosystem services (ES). Although this helped the field to progress and evolve in several directions and contexts, this diversity challenges the mainstreaming of ES information into policy making, natural resource management and green accounting. The Mapping and Modelling working groups of the Ecosystem Service Partnership (ESP) have taken up the challenge to provide structure and guidance in ES mapping practices. The ESP working groups have developed a checklist of information and decisions needed for ES mapping and documentation (Crossman et al., 2013), an online data sharing platform for ES maps (http://esp-mapping.net), and a series of Special Issues (SI) on ES mapping in scientific journals (Crossman et al., 2012, Burkhard et al., 2013, Alkemade et al., 2014). In our search for best ES mapping practices to support decision making we, as leads of the related ESP working groups, invited papers for this SI with recommendations on the ES mapping methods and a description of their applicability under specific geographic characteristics and user objectives. Decisionmaking in which ES maps can play a role is not restricted to national governments, but involves, for example, private companies, watershed managers and non-government organizations. Based on the collection of papers in this SI, we found that the best ES mapping practices to support decision making should be robust, transparent and stakeholder-relevant. These mapping practices include robust modeling, measurement, and stakeholder-based methods for quantification of ES supply, demand and/or flow, as well as measures of uncertainty and heterogeneity across spatial and temporal scales and resolution. Best ES mapping practices are also transparent to contribute to clear information-sharing and the creation of linkages with decision support processes. Lastly, best ES mapping practices are people-central, in which stakeholders are engaged at different stages of the mapping process and match the expectations and needs of end-users. Based on the 16 papers included in this SI, this editorial provides an overview of the best practices and remaining challenges, that lead to robust, transparent and stakeholder-relevant ES mapping for supporting diverse decision-making in diverse contexts. 2. Robust ecosystem services mapping practices