Assessing dependence between soil ecosystem services as a function of weather and soil: Application of vine copula modeling

Soils are natural ecosystems that provide ecosystem services, whose provision depends on multiple soil properties, climate conditions and human management. Dependence among soil ecosystem services (SESs) must therefore be considered to reliably assess risks of improving SES, as a function of weather conditions or soil properties. The present study described dependence among regulating and provisioning SESs predicted by a biophysical soil and crop model, based on a dataset of soils in France. We applied vine copula modeling as a statistical method that can model joint distribution functions of three SESs and enabled us to estimate probabilities of exceeding a level of one SES as a function of another SES. Trade-offs may need to be made between them to manage soil and water resources and achieve a given yield. By highlighting the degree of dependence among multiple SESs, copula models thus provide information that may improve understanding or management of ESs. •Copulas modeled variable dependence between soil ecosystem services (SESs).•Vine copula models analyzed multiple dependence by using pair-decomposition of SESs.•One SES could affect two other SESs separately, but not the dependence between them.