DOI: 10.4228/zalf.dk.154
title: Ecosystem services indicators dataset for the utilized agricultural area of the Märkisch-Oderland District-Brandenburg, Germany

description: The dataset contains six standardized (0-1) indicators of ecosystem services provision for the utilized agricultural area of the Märkisch-Oderland District (NUTS3) in east Brandenburg, Germany. The six ecosystem services are i) habitat for species (HAB), ii) carbon stock total (CST), iii) carbon stock potential (CSP), iv) biomass production (PRO), v) landscape attractiveness (LAT), and vi) water storage (WAS). The data set has 140,116 entries, each one corresponding to a 1 ha size cell (100 m x 100 m), whose centroid coordinates are provided according to the EPSG:4839 - ETRS89/LCC Germany (N-E) – Projected coordinate system for Germany. Each indicator value is standardized as number in the range of 0 to 1. The maximum value observed in the study area is then set equal to 1, and the value 0 indicates the relative minimum in the area considered. For each entry, the dataset provides information about landscape unit, dominant land cover, dominant soil and cadastral parcel (Digitales Feldblockkataster des Landes Brandenburg 2020, DFBK20/BB).
description: The assessment of the six indicators resorted to different methods depending on the availability of data to be used as proxies. A brief description is given for each indicator. i) Habitat for species (HAB). The indicator is based on the area share under specific designations (i.e. Natura2000, FFH, Protected areas) for each cadastral parcel. ii) Carbon stock total (CST). The source data (Mg ha-1, 0-30cm) were derived from the GSP-FAO soil carbon stock map (GSOCmap V1.0, http://54.229.242.119/GSOCmap/) and downscaled to 100 m resolution via a General Linear Model regression followed by Regression Kriging. Input to the regression model (R2 0.31) were soil class, CORINE land cover class, elevation and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) for the months of June and August (average 2000-2019). iii) Carbon stock potential (CSP). The SOC stock estimates are used to infer possible SOC stock changes in terms of carbon sequestration potential. The calculation of the indicator is based on the assumptions that i) soil classes (BUEK 300, http://www.geo.brandenburg.de/boden/ ) are different in SOC content, ii) SOC content results from the combination of soil class and land use (CORINE land cover, https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-cover), and iii) each soil class/land use combination has specific SOC ranges which limit potential SOC changes within specific range boundaries. The upper and lower limit of the SOC specific range were the 95th and the 5th percentile of the observed distributions of each soil class/land use combination (N = 135) in order to cut out outliers and extreme values. The value of CSP was set to 0 for organic soils and for soil with SOC&gt;100 Mg ha-1 (0-30 cm) as these act as source of C. iv) Biomass production (PRO). The indicator is based on the value of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) for the months of June (average 2000-2019). Raster files for MODIS NDVI (16 days average, 250 m resolution) have been freely downloaded from the following URL: https://lpdaacsvc.cr.usgs.gov/ . v) Landscape attractiveness (LAT). The indicator is based on the (co-)occurrence of four landscape features, i.e. green linear elements (e.g. hedgerows, tree lines), green point elements (e.g. woodlots, isolated trees), grasslands and field size (as a proxy of crop diversity). vi) Water storage (WAS). The indicator is based on the SAGA Wetness Index, derived from the 30 m resolution ASTER Digital Terrain Model (DTM), freely downloaded from the following URL: https://lpdaacsvc.cr.usgs.gov/. All GIS operations and mapping were performed using QGIS v3.8.3 (QGIS Development Team, 2019)