Recreational and Nature-Based Tourism as a Cultural Ecosystem Service. Assessment and Mapping in a Rural-Urban Gradient of Central Spain

Cecilia Arnaiz-Schmitz,María F Schmitz,Cristina Herrero-Jáuregui

doi:10.3390/land10040343

Cecilia Arnaiz-Schmitz, María F Schmitz + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/land10040343

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Abstract

Land management focused from the social-ecological perspective of ecosystem services should consider cultural services in decision-making processes. Nature-based tourism offers a great potential for landscape conservation, local development and the well-being of human populations. However, the subjectivity of recreational ecosystem services has meant a clear impediment to assessing and mapping them. In this study, an integrated numerical spatial method is developed, which quantifies the supply and demand of recreational ecosystem services and allows mapping their spatial correspondence along a rural-urban gradient. The procedure also allows quantifying the influence of the landscape structure and the presence of protected areas on the degree of coupling between supply of recreational ecosystem services and demand for outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism and reveals that protected areas are hotspots of recreational ecosystem services. The results obtained highlight the usefulness of the methodological procedure developed as a tool for sustainable land planning and management from an integrative social-ecological approach.

Highlights

This paper provides a social-ecological framework to face outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism (NBT) as a relevant representation of cultural ecosystem services (CES) and provides an replicable methodological approach that favors an integrated land management, using ecological and social resources
The method followed has allowed quantifying and mapping, in a spatially explicit way, the spatial relationships between recreational opportunities and public perceptions and preferences, determining the degree of coupling between supply and demand for recreational services. This social-ecological interaction can be expressed at multiple scales, based on different spatial reference units
In this work the municipalities of the rural-urban gradient were used as analysis units, but the methodological approach can be expressed at different administrative and supra-municipal management scales, depending on the objectives of land planning

Summary

Introduction

The concept of ecosystem services links the functioning of ecosystems with social-ecological systems and human well-being [3,4]. Their supply is vulnerable to human use and highly dependent on the functions of rural and urban ecosystems [5]. In this social-ecological context, the approach of rural-urban gradients is widely used to describe the relationships between land uses, urban sprawl, and ecological and socioeconomic dynamics [6,7,8]

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