"EST: an exploratory model for monitoring the Ecosystem Services in the Venice lagoon"

The Venice lagoon is a complex social-ecological system, where Ecosystem Services (ES) and benefits for people result as emergent properties from the interactions between ecological processes and human activities. Such a complex system is however threatened by several drivers, namely climate change effects, relative sea level rise and overexploitation of the resources. In order to explore the interactions among different ES, the lagoon resources and the social dynamics, it has been created EST (Ecosystem Services Screening Tool), an exploratory model based on the theory of dynamical systems to monitor ES and the possible evolution of the whole social-ecological system. Based on a conceptual model inspired by the “Social-ecological systems framework” and built with the System Dynamics modeling approach, EST has been implemented in Simile v. 6.1 software environment to improve its usability. The exploration of tendency scenarios allowed us to analyze possible reactions of different lagoon elements and the dynamics of its interacting sub-systems, shedding light on the possible outcomes in facing both climate change drivers and different governance choices. EST represents therefore a tool for the ecosystem-based management of a lagoon thriving to adapt to pressures and mitigate impacts, and could play a significant role in informing policymakers’ choices, especially within the context of a “regulated lagoon”, based on the use of the mobile barriers (MOSE) for contrasting the flooding events.