Abstract
Though agricultural landscape biodiversity and ecosystem service (ES) conservation is crucial to sustainability, agricultural land is often underrepresented in ES studies, while cultural ES associated with agricultural land is often limited to aesthetic and tourism recreation value only. This study mapped 7 nonmaterial-intangible cultural ES (NICE) valuations of 34 rural farmers in western Taiwan using the Social Values for Ecosystem Services (SolVES) methodology, to show the effect of farming practices on NICE valuations. However, rather than a direct causal relationship between the environmental characteristics that underpin ES, and respondents’ ES valuations, we found that environmental data is not explanatory enough for causality within a socio-ecological production landscape where one type of land cover type (a micro mosaic of agricultural land cover) predominates. To compensate, we used a place-based approach with Google Maps data to create context-specific data to inform our assessment of NICE valuations. Based on 338 mapped points of 7 NICE valuations distributed among 6 areas within the landscape, we compared 2 groups of farmers and found that farmers’ valuations about their landscape were better understood when accounting for both the landscape’s cultural places and environmental characteristics, rather than environmental characteristics alone. Further, farmers’ experience and knowledge influenced their NICE valuations such that farm areas were found to be sources of multiple NICE benefits demonstrating that farming practices may influence ES valuation in general.
Highlights
Agricultural landscape biodiversity and ecosystem service (ES) conservation is crucial to sustainability since agricultural lands comprise nearly 40% of the earth’s total land area [1], making farmers key to biodiversity conservation at local and global scales [2,3]
This study measured seven nonmaterial-intangible cultural ES (NICE) values by deriving maps based on a combination of farmers’ spatial and nonspatial responses to preference questions about their socio-ecological production landscapes’ (SEPL); and based on variables determined to be socially influential to their decisions to sustain ES and conserve biodiversity with farming practices [55], in order to determine if groups defined by differing combinations of four social influence variables likewise make valuations of the nonmaterial-intangible benefits within their landscape in observably differing ways characterized by spatial patterns
While past studies that map NICE value have sought to associate specific values with specific environmental characteristics or landscape classes, within a small scaled SEPL, in which the entire landscape is a source of NICE value to some degree—reveals that areas within the landscape provide places of differing cultural functions even when the landscape itself is relatively absent abundant natural features
Summary
Agricultural landscape biodiversity and ecosystem service (ES) conservation is crucial to sustainability since agricultural lands comprise nearly 40% of the earth’s total land area [1], making farmers key to biodiversity conservation at local and global scales [2,3]. Governance that accounts for a plurality of values and knowledge systems is currently an acknowledged requirement to socially legitimize real sustainable development [4,5]. Post-Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) [8] international frameworks including the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the European Commission, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative (IPSI), are integrating multiple social values and knowledge systems into their assessments [9,10,11,12].
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
