The interactions among landscape pattern, climate change, and ecosystem services: progress and prospects

Landscape pattern and climate change impact ecosystem services and consequently the sustainability of regions and the entire earth system. Yet, we lack an adequate understanding of the interactions among landscape pattern, climate change, and ecosystem services, or the landscape-climate-ecosystems (LCE) nexus. Improving our understanding of the LCE nexus can help create multifunctional landscapes that are resilient to environmental and socioeconomic perturbations. Thus, the main objectives of this study were as follows: (1) to review and synthesize the existing studies of the LCE nexus and (2) to identify research gaps and discuss future research directions to better understand the LCE nexus. Using the SCOPUS database, we followed the procedure of a systematic review to search and review articles that simultaneously addressed multiple links in the LCE nexus. Our review revealed that landscape governance and planning play an important role in determining the composition and configuration of regional landscapes. In addition, changes in landscape pattern and climate can variably impact provisioning, regulating, and cultural ecosystem services. Although many studies have addressed individual links in the LCE nexus, multiple-step linkages have been rarely addressed. Moving forward, therefore, we should focus more on multi-step linkages and the entire LCE nexus to better understand the feedback loops within the nexus. Doing so is necessary for improving landscape and regional sustainability. In addition, future research needs transdisciplinary approaches that integrate the social and ecological systems in regional landscapes to understand not only how landscape pattern and climate change influence ecosystem services, but also how changes in ecosystem services feedback to affect landscape pattern.