Water sources' key role in the Vomb basin biosphere reserve. An analysis of ecosystem services.

Abstract: This study was done to gain an understanding of the importance of 12 water sources that are in the Vomb biosphere reserve. To do so, an ecosystem services analysis that included the four following types of ecosystem services: provisioning, supporting, regulating, and cultural services, was conducted. The ecosystem services analysis was done by using indicators for each service. A final score based on the status of indicators was given to each of the four ecosystem services for every water source. The study was limited to Lund Municipality. The results were as follows. Both provisioning and cultural services turned out to be in a bad status in most water sources. Regulating services had moderate status in most water sources. For supporting services, an equal number of water sources had good and moderate status respectively. The conclusion is that better information should be available about cultural facilities as well as provisioning services such as fishing. Ecological status needs to be classified for many of the small lakes in the area such as Bysjön and Gröne damm. For future studies, it is of interest to include smaller water sources such as wetlands. It would also be of benefit to assess ecosystem services for the whole biosphere reserve inclusive of all the 3 municipalities.