Cultural Ecosystem Services Research Articles

Using social media data and machine learning to map recreational ecosystem services

Crowdsourced geotagged social media data and machine learning approaches have emerged as promising tools for mapping ecosystem services, especially cultural ecosystem services that are difficult to assess. Here, we use recreation to show how social media data, machine learning, and spatial analysis techniques can improve our understanding of human-nature interactions and the mapping of recreational ecosystem services. We extracted 80,500 photographs taken in non-urban areas of the Tahoe Central Sierra Initiative project area in California between 2005 and 2019 that were posted to the photo sharing application Flickr and used these as a proxy for recreational visits to the area. Automated image content analysis was used to identify the objects and concepts in the photographs and uncover the types of nature experiences that are important to visitors. Additionally, variable importance, a Random Forest machine learning technique, was used to examine the environmental and landscape variables that drive recreation in the area and to create a classification model that predicts the recreation potential of the entire area based on important variables. The automated image content analysis identified 1,239 unique labels linked to recreation, with mountains, hills, and rocks being the most prominent features (22%). Our Random Forest model indicates that vegetation cover, land cover, elevation, smoke days, and landscape features are major drivers of recreation in the area and are of interest to visitors in the area. The model predicted that 25.9% of the area has the potential to support recreational visits. Most of these recreation potential areas are in protected areas (77.8%), predominantly in conifer forests (66%) and within national forest boundaries, especially the Tahoe National Forest area (37.6%). These results show that recreational ecosystem services vary across landscapes and illustrate the need for improved mapping approaches to determine the provision of ecosystem services in different places. The analysis provides novel insights into the various ways social media data and machine learning techniques can be powerful components of ecosystem service research and how they hold great potential for monitoring and informing management interventions on ecosystem service provision, especially in places with limited traditional onsite visitation data.

Research on the Evaluation of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Zhengzhou Urban Parks Based on Public Perceptions

Urban parks are the primary green infrastructure for urban residents to pursue psychological restoration, promote health, relax and connect with nature. The various cultural ecosystem services (CES) provided by urban parks directly impact people’s health and well-being. Understanding the correlation between CES provided by urban parks and the different characteristics of specific groups can promote public willingness to engage with the nature and their health and well-being, and the effective information provided by CES can be used to protect and improve specific or traditional areas of parks. This study focuses on two urban parks (People’s Park and Xiliu Lake Park) located in the central urban area of Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China. A questionnaire survey and participatory mapping methods were employed to explore the priority for 10 types of CES among both local residents and visitors, aiming to reveal the public demand for CES in urban parks and provide a basis for the landscape design or renovation of urban parks. The results show that (1) the main purposes for the public visiting the parks are mental relaxation, scenery appreciation, and leisure and fitness. (2) The public has a rich perception of various types of CES in the urban parks, especially in terms of entertainment and aesthetic value. (3) The impact of education level on cultural services was substantial. (4) The trade-offs and synergies of CES of urban parks are complex and diverse. (5) The public’s perception of urban park CES and spatial value tend to be similar, with a wide distribution. Therefore, to maintain urban sustainable development, urban managers and landscape designers should consider different perspectives on CES provided by urban park stakeholders and enhance their CES through landscape design and renovation practices in urban parks, thereby improving the health and well-being of the public.

A Review of the Recreational Benefits of Cultural Ecosystem Service (CES) Indicators in the Urban Area

A Review of the Recreational Benefits of Cultural Ecosystem Service (CES) Indicators in the Urban Area

Protected Areas and Nature-Based Tourism: A 30-Year Bibliometric Review

Nature-based tourism constitutes a major segment of world tourism. Protected areas are considered a popular theme in the literature, which is characterised by a great heterogeneity in concepts, contents, and purposes. This study analyses many of the indicators of interest related to the research on the themes of protected areas and nature-based tourism. Consequently, we aim to offer a global and updated vision of the research produced regarding these themes over the last 30 years. With bibliometric tools (Bibliometrix and VOSviewer), 1033 scientific articles were analysed. The results indicate that the research in this area exponentially increased in the last decade. Using a co-occurrence network of keywords, five major themes in this study were identified: (1) ecotourism; (2) nature conservation, biodiversity, and sustainability; (3) national parks, recreation, and climate change; (4) sustainable management and development; and (5) with a lesser degree of representation, themes related to China and ecosystem services. A timespan analysis on this network enabled the identification of six trends in the research over the last years: (i) sustainable tourism; (ii) climate change; (iii) geotourism and rural tourism; (iv) ecosystem services and cultural ecosystem services; (v); visitor studies; and (vi) wildlife tourism. Nature-based tourism plays a significant and crucial role in sustainable development. Analysing research in protected areas and nature-based tourism provides insights into key themes and emerging trends, serving as a valuable resource for knowledge advancement.

The impact of coastal realignment on the availability of ecosystem services: gains, losses and trade-offs from a local community perspective

Coastal realignment is the procedure of repositioning or removing coastal defense structures to restore tidal flooding and facilitate the development of intertidal ecosystems in a previously reclaimed area from the sea. A key policy objective of coastal realignment is to increase ecosystem services provided by intertidal ecosystems and thereby contribute to human well-being. However, the social response to coastal realignment is often negative, raising the question as to what extent communities living nearby project locations recognize, value and benefit from the goods and services provided by restored intertidal ecosystems. In this study, we examine public perceptions of ecosystem services gains, losses and trade-offs associated with coastal realignment. We hereby focus on three coastal realignment case study locations in the Southwest delta, the Netherlands. Questionnaires were administered in nearby villages and the collected data (N = 261) were analyzed using random forest regression models. A notable outcome of this study is that local communities often consider coastal realignment interventions to decrease rather than increase the availability of ecosystem services. This points to a discrepancy between how coastal realignment is viewed from a policy perspective and a local community perspective. Changes in the availability of cultural ecosystem services were found to have the highest impact on the level of support for coastal realignment, while the importance attached to provisioning, regulating and supporting ecosystem services was notably lower. In consequence, to increase public support, it will be essential to minimize the loss of cultural ecosystem services, or better yet, find ways to increase cultural ecosystem services through coastal realignment, for instance by creating opportunities for recreation and tourism.

Assessing landscape aesthetic values: Do clouds in photographs influence people's preferences?

Photo-based surveys are widely applied to elicit landscape preferences and to assess cultural ecosystem services. Variations in weather and light conditions can potentially alter people's preferences, as sunny landscapes are more positively perceived than those under inclement weather conditions. To assure comparability across pictures, studies usually include photographs taken at sunny days (i.e., blue sky). However, the influence of clouds in sunny landscapes on people's preferences has been rarely considered, although color contrasts between clouds and the blue sky may attract people's attention. This study therefore aimed to assess the effects of clouds in landscape photographs on people's preferences by (1) examining differences in preference between pairs of landscape photographs (i.e., with clouds and without clouds), and (2) explaining variations through variables from eye-tracking simulation, photo content analysis, and Geographic Information System (GIS)-based analysis. Our results indicate no significant differences in preferences between pictures with and without clouds when the pictures with clouds contained a proportion of sky around 22% and a cloud cover of about 39%. However, a higher proportion of sky positively influenced landscape preferences, while a higher proportion of clouds, especially in combination with a lower proportion of sky, had negative effects. These findings suggest that landscape preference studies should pay attention not only to the appearance of the sky in terms of cloudiness, but they also should control the proportion of sky across different pictures to obtain comparable results. Future research should address limitations regarding the transferability of our findings to other types of landscapes and regarding potential differences in perceptions between respondents with different socio-cultural characteristics. Moreover, landscape preferences under changing weather conditions or different cloud types as well as diurnal and seasonal changes should be further explored.

Integrating socio-spatial preference heterogeneity into the assessment of the aesthetic quality of a Mediterranean agricultural landscape

Assessing ecosystem services associated with agricultural landscapes is of growing interest to the research and policy/practice communities. One particularly challenging aspect to understand is the value of the aesthetic quality of such landscapes, even though this is one of the main contributions that agricultural landscapes make to cultural ecosystem service provision. Indeed, as increasing demands are placed on agricultural landscapes for food production, infrastructure development and urbanisation, aesthetic qualities can be severely affected, particularly if those landscapes are used for traditional agricultural practices. Here we assess the aesthetic quality of an agricultural landscape by integrating social preferences heterogeneity and spatial aspects of the provision, combining subjective and objective perspectives. We work in landscapes dominated by irrigated flowering fruit trees in Cieza, in south-east Spain as it is an excellent example of a semi-arid Mediterranean agroecosystem that delivers multiple ecosystem services, including aesthetic quality, in addition to food production. Using GIS tools and a choice experiment, we assess the social utility function for this landscape, and demonstrate social preferences heterogeneity for demand for the aesthetic qualities of the landscape. Latent class modelling distinguished three populations, with the majority preferring diversified agricultural landscapes and management policies based on a more natural-looking agricultural landscape. These results provide agroecosystem managers with an additional vision focused on enhancing the combination of the most diverse and natural-looking elements in the landscape in order to underpin the delivery of cultural ecosystem services that also increase social well-being.

Agroforestry as a Driver for the Provisioning of Peri-Urban Socio-Ecological Functions: A Trans-Disciplinary Approach

Peri-urban rural system rehabilitation is pivotal to the socio-ecological balanced functioning of urban systems. In this paper, we investigate the performance of agroforestry participative practices in rehabilitating peri-urban belts (in-field productive agroforestry; between-field landscape features). We test a new trans-disciplinary, multi-level analytical framework for the ecosystem services (ESs) assessment based on site-specific socio-ecological information. We parallelly analyse ecological and cultural traits: 1. agroecosystem components (flora–vegetation; human community); 2. their organization at the landscape level (landscape eco-mosaic; cultural landscape); and 3. their socio-ecological functions/processes. We compare the current state with a transformation scenario. The first application to the “Milano Porta Verde” agroecology hub, Italy, outlined: 1. the agro-eco-mosaic structuring and diversification improvement consequent to the agroforestry model spread (higher natural components percentage, agricultural patch shape complexity, landscape heterogeneity, landscape structural diversity, connectivity and circuitry); and 2. the cultural functions provided by participative practices (40 initiatives; 1860 people involved; 10 stakeholder types), enabling cultural landscape rehabilitation processes (higher accessibility, citizen empowerment, community and knowledge building, cultural values building). These results qualitatively inform the ES analysis. The potential ES supply matrices and maps showed an increase, through a transformation scenario, in the total ESs delivered by natural components (+44% support ESs; +36% regulating ESs) and agricultural components (+21% cultural ESs; +15% regulating ESs).

A user-feedback indicator framework to understand cultural ecosystem services of urban green space

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are intangible benefits humans derive from the ecosystem, closely related to residents' spiritual enrichment, perceptual development, entertainment, and aesthetics. Despite the growing recognition of CES, there remains a need for a public understanding of CES performance in terms of indicators content, change and occurrence. This study developed a three-level indicator framework for evaluating urban green spaces CES at the design level. We integrated seven categories of CES indicators as primary indicators of the framework. Based on text comments in social media data, a bottom-up approach was adopted to collect CES-related words as the secondary indicators and elements. We evaluated the CES performance in union square park using the established framework. The results indicate that interactive activities are the most popular CES in the park, while the sense of place, social relationship and educational functions fail to receive a wide response, which should be given strong attention. The leading indicators within the park exhibit consistent trends in seasonal and demographic changes. In addition, there are co-occurrences between CES indicators, mainly manifested in interactive activities, aesthetic values, and health benefits, and the degree of co-occurrence varies. The CES framework proposed in this study measures the CES perception within urban green spaces, provides a detailed explanation of CES indicators, and forms an effective theoretical basis for future park management and development.

Assessing Stakeholders’ Preferences for Future Rice Farming Practices in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

Rice farming is the dominating agriculture activity in the Mekong Delta and has been of significant importance for the region’s economic development, but it has also had an impact on the environment. Recent governmental policies emphasize the need for sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture; however, policy reforms pushing for transformation towards sustainable socio-agricultural systems are compounded by a lack of coherent and shared visions. Gaps between policy making and implementation and stakeholders’ divergent visions of what is meant by sustainable agriculture and how that can be achieved hinder progress. To address this, the Q-methodology was used to elucidate and integrate different perspectives from 41 stakeholders on 35 statements related to agriculture developments in the Mekong Delta. Under the theoretical lens of sustainability, and ecosystem services, the results unveiled four major development schemes, namely production through intensification, sustainable intensification, production through nature, and people and nature in balance. The majority of the stakeholders in this study believed that future agriculture strategies in the Mekong Delta should be designed to promote more diverse and integrated farming methods, emphasizing the environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development. They acknowledged the multifunctional benefits of rice field ecosystems and emphasized the importance of supporting, regulating, and cultural ecosystem services for a long-term and healthy production of food and increased resilience of the Delta’s social-ecological systems.

Assessing scenic beauty of hilly and mountain villages: An approach based on landscape indicators

With the growing demand for cultural ecosystem services around the world, many countries and regions have recognized the importance of the scenic beauty of villages and have introduced relevant policies. Many less modernized hilly and mountain villages will be redesigned. It is important to develop a model to predict the scenic beauty of these villages. However, only limited studies have been conducted to evaluate the scenic beauty of villages. This study aimed to explore the procedures for assessing the scenic beauty of mountain and hilly villages and to investigate the relationship between scenic beauty and landscape indicators. We first summarized the characteristics of these villages. Based on these characteristics, a series of indicators such as depth values and landscape metrics were used as independent variables, while photo scores were used as dependent variables, and different prediction models were developed with multiple linear regression, principal component regression, and support vector regression. Statistical metrics and the generalization ability of different models were compared. The results indicated that the inner areas of Xitou villages had the lowest scenic beauty scores, and people preferred natural scenery. Among landscape indicators, landscape diversity metrics and shape metrics have a significant impact on scenic beauty. Landscapes with a combination of multiple elements and not overly complex shapes may be more attractive. There was a significant negative correlation between mean depth and scenic beauty, implying that people prefer open space. It is essential to consider the depth value when evaluating scenic beauty in regions with strong 3-dimensional elements. The comparison between the three models revealed that the complex nonlinear algorithm performed and generalized better than linear models in villages where these areas are smaller and more sensitive to subtle changes. The method can be applied to other hilly and mountain villages in China, helping designers and decision-makers to output more reasonable planning and management schemes to fully utilize the local landscape and enhance tourism competitiveness and villagers' well-being.

How Does Vegetation Landscape Structure of Urban Green Spaces Affect Cultural Ecosystem Services at Multiscale: Based on PLS-SEM Model

Benefits of cultural ecosystem services (CESs) of urban green spaces (UGSs) for human health and general well-being have been widely recognized. Optimizing the landscape structure of green vegetation and improving CES are essential to reduce environmental inequality, and detecting the determinant landscape features that influence CES at multi-scale is the first step. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), we evaluated multiscale effects of vegetation landscape structure of UGS on residents’ perceptions of CES in 40 residential communities in Zhengzhou city, China. According to our results, at the micro-scale level in a single residential community, public activity spaces within green spaces, particularly large size of open spaces, was the most critical factor affecting residents’ perceptions of recreational services, which provided a multifunctional landscape, with opportunities for multiple recreational leisure activities and entertainment. Then, the percentage of vegetation coverage in green spaces, and large vegetation patches that can significantly improve residents’ perceptions of CES and were identified in the natural landscape. At the ecosystem level and species community level, although vegetation structure contributed little to the level of CES, an open vegetation structure with a large area of grass cover was particularly beneficial to increase aesthetic services, and both richness of flowers and ornamental trees improved residents’ spiritual perception. However, our findings suggest that improving the management of green space vegetation is the most effective and direct way of improving CES and resolving environmental inequities between residential communities with different vegetation coverage and infrastructure, and we suggest that future research should explore residents’ subjective perceptions of both vegetation and landscape structure of UGS at larger spatial scale.

Research on Local Ecosystem Cultural Services in the Jiangnan Water Network Rural Areas: A Case Study of the Ecological Green Integration Demonstration Zone in the Yangtze River Delta, China

Ecosystem cultural services (CESs) are crucial for rural revitalization and sustainable development. As research on monitoring and mapping CESs continues to increase, there is a relative lack of research perspectives that effectively combine spatial modeling techniques with the local context of CESs in rural areas. Rural areas in China face challenges such as the encroachment of ecological service spaces and the displacement and relocation of their own cultural characteristics during the urbanization process. It is crucial to enhance our understanding of the relationship between CES characterization and rural locality. This paper established a framework for the quantitative research and spatial optimization of local CESs in rural areas. We selected the Ecological Green Integrated Development Demonstration Zone (EGIDZ) in the Yangtze River Delta as the research subject, considering its representativeness of the Jiangnan Water Network Area and the characteristics of integrated ecological development across regions. The Maxent model was utilized to integrate environmental variables with the locations of services, facilitating spatial mapping and quantitative evaluation of CESs, as well as determining the influence of each variable. Additionally, K-means clustering was employed to analyze CES combination patterns. The results indicated significant variations in mean values and spatial distribution within each CES category. The natural environment, spatial distance, and human activities factors all exhibited significant effects on shaping local CESs. Furthermore, the CES clusters were classified into three categories: CES-developed cluster, CES-developing cluster, and CES-potential cluster, accounting for 9.34%, 49.23%, and 41.44%, respectively. Based on these comprehensive findings, we provided insights into optimizing local CESs in the Jiangnan Water Network rural areas.

Space Compositional Aspects Regarding the Importance of Trees in the Urban Landscape.

Individual trees and tree compositions provide a wide range of cultural ecosystem services, including playing a key role in defining urban character. In Hungary, urban landscape protection tools have recently been expanded, bringing the topic into the spotlight. However, the significance of natural elements (and particularly trees) in relation to the urban landscape is still under-researched. In this paper, using a novel methodology, the character-forming significance of trees and tree-compositional elements of historic gardens in Hungary that define the urban character is analysed and evaluated. The urban landscape protection tools that establish the current recognition of green elements within the urban landscape are also analysed. In addition, the spatial situations and characteristics making certain trees in historic gardens defining character elements within Hungarian settlements are studied. Reasons behind the lack of significant tree features in certain historic gardens, as well as the external and internal characteristics of tree elements that determine their visual impact have been categorised. The results reveal that visually important trees, while diverse, show distinct trends in terms of visibility and are subject to constant change. The results imply that a paradigm shift is necessary to maintain, design and regulate green infrastructure in relation to visually important trees.

Deep sea nature-based solutions to climate change

The deep sea (below 200 m depth) is the largest carbon sink on Earth. It hosts abundant biodiversity that underpins the carbon cycle and provides provisioning, supporting, regulating and cultural ecosystem services. There is growing attention to climate-regulating ocean ecosystem services from the scientific, business and political sectors. In this essay we synthesize the unique biophysical, socioeconomic and governance characteristics of the deep sea to critically assess opportunities for deep-sea blue carbon to mitigate climate change. Deep-sea blue carbon consists of carbon fluxes and storage including carbon transferred from the atmosphere by the inorganic and organic carbon pumps to deep water, carbon sequestered in the skeletons and bodies of deep-sea organisms, carbon buried within sediments or captured in carbonate rock. However, mitigating climate change through deep-sea blue carbon enhancement suffers from lack of scientific knowledge and verification, technological limitations, potential environmental impacts, a lack of cooperation and collaboration, and underdeveloped governance. Together, these issues suggest that deep-sea climate change mitigation is limited. Thus, we suggest that a strong focus on blue carbon is too limited a framework for managing the deep sea to contribute to international goals, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris Agreement and the post-2020 Biodiversity Goals. Instead, the deep sea can be viewed as a more holistic nature-based solution, including many ecosystem services and biodiversity in addition to climate. Environmental impact assessments (EIAs), area-based management, pollution reduction, moratoria, carbon accounting and fisheries management are tools in international treaties that could help realize benefits from deep-sea, nature-based solutions.

Increasing plant species richness by seeding has marginal effects on ecosystem functioning in agricultural grasslands

Abstract Experimental evidence shows that grassland plant diversity enhances ecosystem functioning. Yet, the transfer of results from controlled biodiversity experiments to naturally assembled ‘real world’ ecosystems remains challenging due to environmental variation among sites, confounding biodiversity ecosystem functioning relations in observational studies. To bridge the gap between classical biodiversity‐ecosystem functioning experiments and observational studies of naturally assembled and managed ecosystems, we created regionally replicated, within‐site gradients of species richness by seeding across agricultural grasslands differing in land‐use intensity (LUI) and abiotic site conditions. Within each of 73 grassland sites, we established a full‐factorial experiment with high‐diversity seeding and topsoil disturbance and measured 12 ecosystem functions related to productivity, and carbon and nutrient cycling after 4 years. We then analysed the effects of plant diversity (seeded richness as well as realized richness), functional community composition, land use and abiotic conditions on the ecosystem functions within (local scale) as well as among grassland sites (landscape scale). Despite the successful creation of a within‐site gradient in plant diversity (average increase in species richness in seeding treatments by 10%–35%), we found that only one to two of the 12 ecosystem functions responded to realized species richness, resulting in more closed nitrogen cycles in more diverse plant communities. Similar results were found when analysing the effect of the seeding treatment instead of realized species richness. Among sites, ecosystem functioning was mostly driven by environmental conditions and LUI. Also here, the only functions related to plant species richness were those associated with a more closed nitrogen cycle under increased diversity. The minor effects of species enrichment we found suggest that the functionally‐relevant niche space is largely saturated in naturally assembled grasslands, and that competitive, high‐functioning species are already present. Synthesis: While nature conservation and cultural ecosystem services can certainly benefit from plant species enrichment, our study indicates that restoration of plant diversity in naturally assembled communities may deliver only relatively weak increases in ecosystem functioning, such as a more closed nitrogen cycle, within the extensively to moderate intensively managed agricultural grasslands of our study.

Assessment of Society’s Perceptions on Cultural Ecosystem Services in a Cultural Landscape in Nanchang, China

Ancient villages are a unique landscape of cultural heritage with both tangible and intangible culture, which provide rich ecosystem services for human beings. Assessment of society’s perceptions on cultural heritage landscapes can improve the integration of cultural heritage values into decision-making processes that affect landscapes, thereby contributing to maximizing the benefits people receive from cultural ecosystem services. Based on this premise, a new sense-based hierarchical assessment framework for a cultural landscape of ancient villages in China from the perspectives of experts and the public was developed in this study. Field research was conducted by the experts to preliminarily extract the evaluation indicators by identifying and refining the characteristics of the landscape perception units based on the classification of village’s landscape resources. The public indicators as supplements were determined by the semantic and social networks generated with ROSTCM tool post-processing, which followed crawling public comments on the tourism platforms with Python. The findings indicated that visual stimulation (57.36%) is the strongest, while touch perception is the weakest (3.56%). The proportion of hearing, smell, and taste was 21.52%, 12.05%, and 5.53%, respectively. Furthermore, people consider variety, historicity, culture, and localism as the core themes of perception in their landscape experiences. The value and usefulness of the sensory experiences for cultural landscape assessment and for decision-making in the context of cultural ecosystem services are discussed.

Assessment of Cultural Ecosystem Services and Well-Being: Testing a Method for Evaluating Natural Environment and Contact Types in the Harku Municipality, Estonia

This study examined the evaluation of cultural ecosystem services (CESs) and their impact on well-being in peri-urban areas, using a case study in Harku municipality, Estonia. CESs, encompassing intangible factors such as emotions and values, are crucial for well-being but challenging to assess. To address this, a pilot method was developed, involving a typology of natural environment types (NETs) and contact types (CTs), assessed by a panel of local experts. The results revealed that “spiritual, historic, and symbolic” gardens exhibited a strong positive connection to well-being. Blue and green spaces offering physical activities and aesthetics were also highly rated. Surprisingly, cemeteries scored higher than expected. Agreement among experts varied, with “parks + sporting” showing near-perfect consensus and weaker agreement found in “parks + food production”, “blue spaces + providing gathering places”, and “green landscape elements + education”, highlighting diverse expert perspectives in identifying suitable combinations of NETs and CTs. This study addresses research-to-practice gaps and methodological challenges in applying CESs within planning frameworks, providing valuable insights for managing and conserving services in peri-urban areas. By testing the proposed method, this research contributes to a better understanding of how CESs can be effectively integrated into planning processes, fostering sustainable well-being in peri-urbanised regions.

Rural Landscape Simplification and Provision of Cultural Ecosystem Services. A Case Study in the Argentine Pampas

In recent decades, the rural landscape of the Argentine Pampas has undergone a process of simplification due to the increased land allocated to crops, replacing pastures and grasslands, with a substantial increase in soybean area. In 2016-2017, a survey was conducted to analyze changes in cultural ecosystem services in this region. Pergamino citizens relate landscape improvement in terms of aesthetic and recreational values to increasing its complexity since they prefer more winter crops, grazing areas, native vegetation, trees, and birds. The significant relationship between sociodemographic variables and preferences for landscape attributes is consistent with the notion that aesthetic perception is constructed from personal experiences and background.

Green in grey: ecosystem services and disservices perceptions from small-scale green infrastructure along a rural-urban gradient in Bengaluru, India

ABSTRACT Ecosystem services provided by green infrastructure are often discussed for their potential to address the societal challenges of urbanization. However, green infrastructure, particularly small-scale types (e.g. trees), is vulnerable to loss through urbanization and is often passed over during scientific investigations. Studies on the perceptions of ecosystem services and disservices (hereafter called ecosystem (dis)services) dynamics along the rural-urban gradient are particularly rare in the literature. Therefore, this study assessed the perceived importance of ecosystem (dis)services associated with small-scale green infrastructure along a rural-urban gradient in Bengaluru, India. Based on photos of the five most common types of small-scale green infrastructure and the three most common tree species associated with them, we conducted a photo-elicitation survey of 649 residents from 61 towns in Bengaluru. We found significant differences in the perceptions of all ecosystem (dis)services among the types of green infrastructure. The most appreciated services were air/climate regulation from platform trees and aesthetic values from farm trees. Regulating services were most appreciated in urban areas while provisioning and cultural services were most appreciated in transitional areas, and disservices were most strongly perceived in rural areas. Gender, age, education, caste, and income from agriculture significantly affected the use and valuation of the ecosystem (dis)services within the local communities. Our study reveals the crucial role of small-scale green infrastructure as a multifunctional element, which is highly relevant for the supply of provisioning, regulating, and cultural ecosystem services in Bengaluru.