Policy makers have to select effective planning strategies regarding ecosystem services management using the best information that science and technology can provide them. It has been demonstrated that spatial indicators have the power of bringing together necessary data to infor
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Policy makers have to select effective planning strategies regarding ecosystem services management using the best information that science and technology can provide them. It has been demonstrated that spatial indicators have the power of bringing together necessary data to inform policy makers. Furthermore, spatial indicators provide a starting point for decision-making. The ultimate objective of this study is to develop a decision support tool that can be used by policy makers to assess the impact of their integrated natural resources management (INRM) strategies on selected ecosystem services. This study proposes a spatial planning tool to present spatial indicators to track changes in ecosystem services provision by considering the mutual interaction between hydrological and land-use changes. The results of modelling scenarios from the coupling of a hydrological model (SW IM) and a land-use model (SITE) have been used to derive spatial indicators. These spatial indicators quantify dynamic changes of landscape patterns related to ecosystem services provision. The approach used has been applied to a case study dealing with INRM in the Drakensberg area, South Africa. The spatial indicators were selected specifically to show the consequences of action or inaction by humans for human well-being and ecosystems by measuring the efficacy of spatial management measures we take on the spatial configuration of the landscape. In the future, a web-based indicator atlas will be implemented, based on the same open source technology. The spatial planning tool displays spatial indicators of the changes in ecosystem services provision over time as a function of land-use and hydrological dynamics, represented in GIS layers produced by the models. The proposed tool is valuable in a decision making process, because it provides a better way of communicating complex model results to the public and stakeholders, informing them how socio-economic development and planning measures will affect the ecosystem services in their region.@en