Assessing Relations between Cultural Ecosystem Services, Physical Landscape Features and Accessibility in Central-Eastern Europe: A PPGIS Empirical Study from Hungary

István Valánszki,Márta Ladányi,Krisztina Filepné Kovács,Albert Fekete,Lone Søderkvist Kristensen,Sándor Jombach

doi:10.3390/su14020754

Abstract

Despite the growing quantity of ecosystem-services-related research, there is still a lack of deeper understanding on cultural ecosystem services (CES). This is mainly due to the perception of CES, which can vary by geographic location and population. In this study, we present a Public Participation Geographic Information System (PPGIS) method in a Hungarian microregion. Our goal is to increase understanding on how cultural services are perceived in this geographical context and level, and how this relative importance is related to biophysical landscape features. We also consider the influence of accessibility on the perceived landscape and compare our findings with the results of other studies with different sociocultural backgrounds. The research consists of participatory mapping with 184 persons that were digitized and analyzed with GIS and statistical software. During the analysis, we identified CES hotspots and compared CES with landscape features, as well as CES perception with accessibility. Our results showed positive correlation of CES with land covers related to built-up areas, as well as aesthetic and recreational services with water bodies. Compared to other studies, we found different spatial relationships in the case of spiritual services, and higher importance of agricultural land covers during the CES perception, thanks to the Central-Eastern European (CEE) sociocultural background. Our study highlights the effect of accessibility on CES perception; nevertheless, these relationships varied by different infrastructural elements. We conclude by discussing the implications and limitations of our study and encouraging future landscape research to apply the PPGIS method in this geographical context.

Highlights

Surveys of people’s perceptions, attitudes and values oriented by the landscape have taken place for decades, often with the purpose of satisfying demand for public participation in policy making and planning [1]
In comparison with other studies, our findings confirmed the following: the cultural ecosystem services (CES) types appear in spatial patterns and they are concentrated in hotspots (e.g., [12]); these patterns differ among CES types (e.g., [54]); the spatial concentrations of recreation and historic services are higher than other services (e.g., [47]); the importance of water surfaces and diverse topography related to aesthetic and recreational services (e.g., [58]); the relevance of the surrounding environment and visibility of a characteristic landscape element [31]
We found the following similarities with previous studies: the built-up areas are associated with all types of CES (e.g., [29]); forests provide high levels of aesthetic and recreational services (e.g., [6]); grasslands and pastures are not associated with CES (e.g., [58]); with the exception of aesthetic service, international protected areas have no spatial association with perceived CES (e.g., [47]); a proven aesthetic–recreational bundle (e.g., [12]); CES bundles and pairs appear mainly in or around settlements (e.g., [65])

Summary

Introduction

Surveys of people’s perceptions, attitudes and values oriented by the landscape have taken place for decades, often with the purpose of satisfying demand for public participation in policy making and planning [1]. 1990s, the concept has become significant in environmental decision making [2] as well as in guiding surveys of people’s perception of landscape values and environmental resource issues. Cultural ecosystem services (CES), defined as nonmaterial benefits obtained from. Despite a growing number of ecosystem-services-related research, there is still (1) a lack of deeper understanding of CES [5], (2) challenges in relation to its assessment and evaluation [6] and (3) challenges in relation to its integration in policy and planning [7]. CES assessment requires either indicator measures using existing databases (e.g., tourist attraction/m2 )

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion