Quantifying and mapping ecosystem service use across stakeholder groups: Implications for conservation with priorities for cultural values

Abstract

Economic and biophysical assessments are being used to portray the value of ecosystem services (ES) to decision makers. However, stakeholder uses of ES are rarely considered, nor are intangible cultural values. Public participatory GIS methods enabled for 16 cultural and provisioning ES indicators to be effectively mapped across seven stakeholder groups in an area lacking data. During interviews, polygons representing ES use were drawn by participants and then subsequently analyzed to produce areas of overlapping use, generating ES hotspots for each group, for cultural and provisioning ES, and for all groups combined. In many cases, cultural ES were deemed to be more important to stakeholders than provisioning ES. We demonstrate an effective non-economic tool used to visualize ES use across eight differing stakeholder groups on a regional scale, which were straightforward to disseminate during a decision-making process for a large hydroelectric dam.