Maps of alpha- and beta-multifunctionality across Europe

This dataset is a spatial shapefile that stores the information of alpha- and beta-multifunctionality mapped at the municipality level across Europe. We used 18 ecosystem service indicators of the European MAES dataset (Maes et al., 2015) to assess ecosystem multifunctionality using two metrics: (i) alpha-multifunctionality, defined as the diversity of ecosystem service supply at the municipality level; and (ii) beta-multifunctionality, defined as the unique ecosystem service contribution of each municipality to the regional ecosystem service supply. <br>Municipalities are represented by the lower Local Administrative Units (LAU level 2). The regional level is represented by NUTS3 regions (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics). To assess alpha-multifunctionality, we calculated the Gini-Simpson diversity index of all ecosystem services supplied at the municipality level (Simpson, 1949). Resulting alpha-multifunctionality values vary between 0 and 1. Beta-multifunctionality was assessed by evaluating the total abundance-based dissimilarities of ecosystem service supply among all municipalities of one NUTS3 region. Resulting beta-multifunctionality values vary between 0 and 1. A combined indicator of alpha- and beta-multifunctionality (bivariate class) was created, by splitting alpha- and beta-multifunctionality into three classes by quantiles (class intervals of alpha: [0-0.774], [0.775-0.793], [0.794-0.923]; class intervals of <br><p></p>