Work

Disentangling, quantifying and visualising ecosystem services and multifunctionality through a radar plot method

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Ecosystem services guide conservation policies, land management strategies, and environmental governance. Yet, quantifying ecosystem multifunctionality, the capacity of ecosystems to simultaneously support diverse services, remains methodologically challenging and difficult to communicate beyond academia. This paper introduces a novel approach, the radar plot method, to quantify ecosystem multifunctionality, without being constrained by the availability of biodiversity metrics and with an intuitive yet informative graphical output. The method quantifies multifunctionality from radar-plot areas in polar coordinates, enabling direct ecosystem comparisons and hierarchical assessments of subservices and services. The resulting index combines the mean of services and associated variance, distinguishing overall functioning from functional balance. The performance of the radar plot method is evaluated against four widely used multifunctionality methods: averaging, single threshold, multiple thresholds and effective multifunctionality (Hill numbers), using a conceptual dataset. Reanalysis of previously published data further demonstrate the utility of the radar plot method . Across both tests, the radar plot method produced results consistent with existing methods while providing an intuitive graphical representation directly linked to multifunctionality as well as its component functions and their strengths. The radar plot method combines simplicity with a hierarchical framework that captures multiple levels of ecosystem functioning while retaining statistical power and clear visual interpretation. It therefore provides an accessible way to quantify and disentangle ecosystem multifunctionality while strengthening communication between ecological research and environmental decision-making.

Source: Ecological Indicators

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2026.115477