Assessing ecosystem services in protected areas: trade-offs and hotspots in Friuli Venezia Giulia region (northeastern Italy)

Protected areas (PAs) are expected to provide multiple ecosystem services (ESs), but quantitative assessments on their effectiveness in maintaining ESs are often lacking. This work aims to assess the effectiveness of PAs in delivering multiple ESs compared to unprotected areas (NPAs), while exploring trade-offs and synergies between ESs and their hotspots. To this end we quantified, mapped and analysed four forest-related ESs in mountainous region of North-eastern Italy, which includes several PAs of Natura 2000 network. We found higher values of habitat provision and recreation supply ESs in PAs rather than in NPAs, but lower C storage and erosion control ES. No extreme trade-offs between ESs were observed, and hotspots were identified both inside and outside PAs. Our results suggested that landscapes composition in land use and cover as well as their geo-climatic characteristics mostly influenced PAs and NPAs’ ability to provide ESs.