Abstract
Recreation is an important cultural ecosystem service and is one way in which communities experience the direct and indirect benefits arising from the experiential use of their environment. The recent rise in popularity of Global Positioning System (GPS) game applications, which combine information technology with an activity that increases mobility and encourages outdoor enjoyment, provides ecosystem service practitioners with an opportunity to make use of this georeferenced data to assess recreational ecosystem services. Geocaching is one such worldwide outdoor game. It has fixed points of incursion where people can hide and look for caches. This study explores the possibility of using geocaching data as a proxy for recreational ecosystems services in the Maltese Islands. A quantitative analysis of the georeferenced caches was used together with their visit rates and number of favourite points. This was supplemented by two questionnaires that investigated the preferences and experiences of both geocache placers (n=39) and hunters (n=21). Results show that the highest number of caches were placed and searched for in urban areas and that geocaching is strongly associated with the presence and accessibility of urban green infrastructure. The number of geocachers who stated preference for experiences in nature did not translate into high visit rates to sites of high conservation value (protected areas) but landscape value was significantly associated with recreational ecosystem services flow. The results presented here provide evidence that geocaching spatial data can act as an indicator for assessing and mapping recreational ecosystem services in urban environments and in cultural landscapes.
Highlights
The assessment and mapping of ecosystems and their services is a commitment of the European Union (EU) member states under Action 5 of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020
Geocache type and land use land cover (LULC) category were significantly associated with the number of quests and favourite points but no significant interactions between these two categorical factors were recorded
Urban caches were associated with a significantly higher number of quests in comparison to marine and other terrestrial LULC categories (Table 2), while marine caches had a significantly higher number of favourite points when compared to urban areas
Summary
The assessment and mapping of ecosystems and their services is a commitment of the European Union (EU) member states under Action 5 of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020. Activities carried out under this commitment should support the maintenance and restoration of ecosystems and their services in order to ensure human well-being. This statement is supported by recent work at pan-European scale, which has shown that ecosystems in favourable conditions support biodiversity and have a higher capacity to supply ecosystem services and, in particular, regulating and cultural services, in comparison to habitats in unfavourable conditions (Maes et al 2012). Driven by policy questions and different governance contexts, various conceptual frameworks have been developed for the assessment and mapping of ecosystem services (de Groot et al 2010, Maes et al 2016b, Müller and Burkhard 2012, Potschin and Haines-Young 2011). Indicators are often used to derive information that communicates the characteristics and trends of ecosystem services, making it possible for policy-makers to understand their condition, trends and rate of change (Maes et al 2016a)
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