Manu E Saunders, Romina Rader, Darren Ryder, Oscar Cacho

Multifunctional landscapes provide multiple ecosystem services and are managed collaboratively to preserve biodiversity and ecosystem function and support human wellbeing. Linking ecological patterns across systems is essential to advance ecosystem services research and inform ecologically-sustainable landscape management. Network theory provides a robust, accessible framework to build knowledge of ecosystem services, engage with stakeholders, and link disciplinary knowledge and system processes across multiple scales. But two major knowledge gaps need to be overcome to facilitate a unified framework for quantifying ecosystem services via integrated social, ecological and economic networks: (i) methods to link social actors with biodiversity and ecosystem function across different systems (terrestrial—aquatic and social—ecological); and (ii) a simple ecosystem services network typology that is relevant across disciplines and systems, and is accessible to practitioners. We advocate an interdisciplinary approach to ecosystem services networks that is grounded in ecological theory. Research and practice should prioritise understanding critical connections between systems, particularly terrestrial—aquatic energy flows and relationships between biodiversity, ecosystem function and human wellbeing.