A Functional–Territorial Typology of Ecosystem Service Provision and Insights for Incentive Design in Portugal

The increasing integration of ecosystem services (ES) into environmental and agricultural policies creates the need for operational approaches linking ecosystem service assessment with territorial planning and incentive design. This study develops a functional–territorial typology of ES provision for mainland Portugal based on the assessment of 26 ecosystem services derived from the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES v5.2) across 278 municipalities. Territorial clusters were identified using provisioning and regulating ES, while cultural ES were subsequently incorporated into functional bundles and territorial–functional analyses. The analysis identified three functional ES bundles and six territorial socio-ecological regimes representing distinct patterns of ES provision. Functional bundle identification proved highly robust, with 92.3% of ES retaining the same bundle assignment across alternative correlation thresholds. A sensitivity analysis including cultural ES confirmed the stability of the main territorial regimes. Between 70% and 86% of municipalities remained within the same territorial group, while most reclassifications occurred near the boundaries between neighbouring regimes, indicating local refinements rather than changes in the overall territorial organization. Cross-analysis showed that territorial regimes differ systematically in ES configurations, baseline conditions, and patterns of synergies and trade-offs, indicating that additionality is inherently territorial and cannot be adequately interpreted using uniform baselines. Building on these findings, we propose a framework of territorially differentiated Ecosystem Service Provision Units (UPSE) incorporating variations in ES configurations and additionality potential across socio-ecological contexts. The framework provides a methodological basis for more context-sensitive ES incentives, restoration strategies, and environmental policy instruments.