%I Wiley %J Conservation Science and Practice %L discovery10206651 %K carbon storage, nutrient retention efficiency, sediment yield, vegetation loss, water quality, wetland %T Land use and regulating ecosystem services scenarios for the Brazilian Pantanal and its surroundings under different storylines of future regional development %D 2025 %O © 2025 The Author(s). Conservation Science and Practice published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. %X The Pantanal, the largest worldwide continuous wetland, is considered a global hotspot of ecosystem services. Based on processâ€based modeling, we assessed plausible scenarios of land use for the Brazilian Pantanal wetland and its surrounding highlands by the year 2050. The simulations indicate likely trajectories of landâ€use change and the corresponding consequences for ecosystem services by looking specifically at soil loss, sediment yield, water quality, and carbon storage. The “Economy based on sustainable principles†scenario, in which landowners maintain native vegetation above Brazilian law requirements can lead to large reductions in soil losses and sediment yield (45%), whereas an increase in nutrients retention efficiency of soils (2%) and aboveâ€ground carbon storage (7%) compared to the reference scenario of “Business as usual†(BAU). On the other hand, the scenario of “Accelerating anthropogenic changes†might lead to an increase in soil losses (8%) and sediment yield (11%), with a reduction in the efficiency of soil nutrients retention (3%) and carbon storage (15%). This study illustrates that the enhanced awareness of future potential impacts can pave the way for less harmful decisions in the midâ€term, toward the adoption of suitable strategies aligned with sustainable practices. Based on this, we discussed several initiatives that demonstrate the feasibility of moving toward most collective desirable scenarios. %A Angélica Guerra %A Fernando Resende %A Ivan Bergier %A Alison Fairbrass %A Cássio Bernardino %A Daniel Amorim Souza Centurião %A Fábio Bolzan %A Guellity Marcel %A Isabel MD Rosa %A Julio Cesar Sampaio da Silva %A LetÃcia Couto Garcia %A LetÃcia Larcher %A Paulo Tarso Sanches de Oliveira %A Rafael Morais Chiaravalloti %A Renato Roscoe %A Rômullo Louzada %A Sandra Santos %A Walfrido Moraes Tomas %A André Valle Nunes %A Fabio de Oliveira Roque