The influence of landscape context on the production of cultural ecosystem services

Abstract

Context Recent efforts to apply sustainability concepts to entire landscapes have seen increasing interest in approaches that connect socioeconomic and biophysical systems. Evaluating these connections through a cultural ecosystem services lens clarifies how different spatiotemporal scales and levels of organisation influence the production of cultural benefits. Currently, however, the effects of multi-level and multi-scale ecological variation on the production of cultural benefits have not yet been disentangled. Objectives To quantify the amount of variation in cultural ecosystem service provision by birds to birders that is due to landscape-level attributes. Methods We used data from 293 birding routes and 101 different birders in South African National Parks to explore the general relationships between birder responses to bird species and environmental conditions, bird-related observations, the biophysical attributes of the landscape and their effect on bird-related cultural benefits. Results Biophysical attributes (particularly biome, vegetation type, and variance in elevation) significantly increased the percentage of variance explained in birder benefits from 57 to 65%, demonstrating that birder benefits are derived from multi-level (birds to ecosystems) and multi-scale (site to landscape) social and ecological interactions. Conclusions Landscape attributes influence people’s perceptions of cultural ecosystem service provision by individual species. Recognition of the complex, localised and inextricable linkage of cultural ecosystem services to biophysical attributes can improve our understanding of the landscape characteristics that affect the supply and demand of cultural ecosystem services.

Research for Rural Development 2023 : annual 29th international scientific conference proceedings

“…As mentioned before several authors that used the survey method incorporates some sort of GIS mapping tools to visually represent data or include separate assessment layers (De Vreese et al, 2016;Dramstad et al, 2006;Plieninger et al, 2013;Ruskule, Klepers, & Veidemane, 2018). Zoeller, Gurney, & Cumming (2022) method incorporated statistical analysis and researched an interesting connection between bird occurrence and people's perceptions of landscape. The same approach was used together with a questionnaire, species mapping and using statistical analysis for data processing (Assandri et al, 2018).…”

“…Recently more and more attention has been drawn to cultural ecosystem services (CES) and their benefits to human health (Spage, 2022). The importance of ES to human well-being has been pointed out by several authors (Havinga et al, 2021;López Sánchez, Tejedor Cabrera, & Linares Gómez del Pulgar, 2020;Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005;Van Berkel et al, 2018;Zoeller, Gurney, & Cumming, 2022), especially when talking about CES Martín-López et al, 2012;Sikora & Kaczyńska, 2022). Even though researchers have pointed out this crucial role of CES, this ES section still has been falling behind regulatory and provisioning services due to difficulties in indicator selection, data collection and method choice (Pleasant et al, 2014;Vihervaara, Rönkä, & Walls, 2010), there are still complications in CES quantification (Swetnam, Harrison-Curran, & Smith, 2017).…”

Farmers’ perception of the ecosystem services provided by diurnal raptors in arid Rajasthan

“…On a five-point Likert scale (1-Strongly disagree to 5-Strongly agree) ( Likert, 1932 ), respondents were asked to rank raptors according to their perception about nine different statements. The statements were about the possible ecosystem benefits and harm that raptors may provide ( Martínez-Sastre et al, 2020 ; Echeverri et al, 2019 ; Zoeller, Gurney & Cumming, 2022 ). Information related to poultry predation was also obtained from the respondents who are involved in poultry raising and management ( n = 104).…”

“…Factanal function was used to divide the likert scale items into three major categories ( Table 1 ) of ecosystem services provided by raptors ( Echeverri et al, 2019 ; Zoeller, Gurney & Cumming, 2022 ). For both male and female respondents, we also calculated pairwise correlation across these nine ecosystem services.…”

“…Cultural ecosystem services, includes the environmental basis for aesthetic, spiritual, and recreational experiences, cultural heritage, sense of place and ways of life ( Winthrop, 2014 ). According to Zoeller, Gurney & Cumming (2022) , there is a well-established understanding of the relationships between functional traits of organisms and provisioning and regulating ecosystem services. However, the specific traits that contribute to the benefits derived from cultural ecosystem services are not yet clearly identified and the contribution of raptors to cultural ecosystem services such as sense of place or education is unknown ( Echeverri et al, 2019 ).…”