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. 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