Karl Seeley

This article shows how to restore Central European natural capital effectively. Water in the landscape is primarily sustained by vegetation and soil, most effectively by natural forests and only secondarily by artificial reservoirs. The authors document these facts using a case study from the Želivka River basin (Švihov reservoir), which collects surface water for the metropolitan region of Prague and Central Bohemia. With the Energy-Water-Vegetation Method, the authors demonstrate that the cultural human-changed landscape of the Želivka river basin is able to utilize only about 60% of its solar energy potential. In 1.5% of the territory of the Czech Republic, society annually loses supporting ecosystem services at a level higher than 25% of the annual GDP of the CR 2015. Water retention in the landscape needs to be re-evaluated and addressed in accordance with the thermodynamic principles of life and ecosystem functioning in the biosphere. It is necessary to begin restoring the most efficient natural capital in the landscapes and to return the broad-leaved deciduous forests by intelligent forestation methods to the cultural landscape to the extent justified; this is especially true of the Želivka River basin, which is Czechia’s biggest surface drinking-water collecting area.

The results of a broader notion of value for measuring ecosystem services (ESs) are presented, as recently demanded by R. Costanza, with attention to the biophysical, thermodynamic aspects of value. The unifying basis in any ecosystem is the solar energy inflow and the growing efficiency of its use with higher stages of self-organized succession processes. The authors utilize two methods of nonmarket valuation (Biotope Valuation Method, Energy-Water-Vegetation Method) which show the range of the environmental values of nature, from how costly it is for nations to restore the quality of a landscape (biotopes as specific habitats for specific species) to their real abilities to replace the core supporting and regulating services of ecosystems (climatizing service, water-retention service, oxygen production, habitats for biodiversity). The role of natural forests and wetlands as the most effective solar energy users is shown and compared with agricultural lands and other human-altered ecosystem groups. A comparison of ESs value ratios with the welfare-method results of Costanza’s team shows much higher importance of natural forests as the best climatic and water regulators in sustainable landscape decision-making. The authors show that it is not the replacement-cost method that overestimates, but rather, preferential methods that underestimate the values of ESs.