Compositional environmental heterogeneity to protect future evenness in nature’s contributions to people

Multifunctionality is a crucial element of landscape sustainability. Managing landscapes for multifunctionality aims to secure a balanced suite of nature’s contributions to people (NCP). However, most assessments of multifunctionality are constrained to the NCP that are known today. This study examines whether compositional heterogeneity in environmental conditions (variation in environmental conditions present) can safeguard future multifunctionality (evenness in NCP provision), even when novel NCP are discovered in the future. (1) To analyse the change in evenness between the current and future suites of NCP provided by simulated landscapes, depending on their compositional environmental heterogeneity. (2) To investigate whether the relationship between multifunctionality and evenness depends on the niche relationships of NCP. (3) To investigate the sensitivity of the multifunctionality-heterogeneity relationship to the proportion of the total NCP that are known currently. Using a simulation approach, I modelled provision of current and novel NCP across 10,000 virtual landscapes with varied compositional environmental heterogeneity, under assumptions of NCP niche separation and overlap, and across varying proportions of known and unknown future NCP. Compositional environmental heterogeneity significantly enhances the future multifunctionality of NCP provision. This relationship was found in both types of NCP niche relationships. The magnitude of the relationship between compositional environmental heterogeneity and future change in NCP evenness was stronger when a smaller percentage of the total future NCP were known currently. These findings show an ecosystem-scale spatial parallel to the concept of biodiversity’s “option value,” suggesting that compositional environmental heterogeneity provides a form of insurance against our current lack of understanding of NCP.