Supply Of Cultural Ecosystem Services Research Articles

A rapid indicator of cultural ecosystem service usage at a fine spatial scale: Content analysis of social media photographs

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are an important benefit that habitats provide, particularly in the fragments of natural ecosystems that remain in urban areas. To manage CES we need to understand what people use habitats for, and where different activities take place. It is challenging to assess CES provision, as surveys and interviews are time consuming and can be expensive. Social media data, particularly geo-tagged photographs, are spatially explicit and contain visual information that can be used to infer cultural use. Indicators of CES derived from social media make use of existing data so may contribute useful information for rapid, cost-effective assessments of CES. In this study we develop an indicator of CES usage that is derived from photographs from an image-sharing website, at two different scales. First, we compare four small (<150ha) urban mangrove sites in Singapore, using photograph content to classify sites according to predominant cultural use. Second, the spatial distribution of different CES was modelled within one site using MaxEnt. A resampling simulation was conducted to identify the sensitivity of the photograph classification to the number of photographs classified. Photographs of social recreation, organisms and landscapes occurred most commonly. The proportional occurrence of photograph types differed between sites depending on their characteristics. Within one site, the probability of occurrence of social recreation photographs was highest around built focal points, while photographs of organisms were more likely in the mangrove and terrestrial habitats. Classifying more than 50–70 photographs (which would take approximately 30minutes) gave only small increases in categorisation accuracy. This tool for CES assessment rapidly provided information that would be useful for managing Singapore's mangroves. The approach could be widely applied to assess CES provision across a range of habitats and settings, helping CES to become more commonly considered in ecosystem service evaluations.

Contrasting values of cultural ecosystem services in urban areas: The case of park Montjuïc in Barcelona

Urban green infrastructure attracts growing attention for its potential as a nature-based strategy to improve quality of life through the provision of ecosystem services. In this paper, we value cultural ecosystem services in relation to land-uses and management regimes of urban green infrastructure. Through a survey among 198 beneficiaries of the largest urban park in Barcelona, Spain, we assessed cultural ecosystem services in monetary and non-monetary terms in relation to land-uses and management regimes. Results from our research suggest that monetary and non-monetary valuations capture complementary information, and show that values of cultural ecosystem services change across different green infrastructure assets and management regimes. For example, ‘environmental learning’ generates low monetary values but high non-monetary values. Stronger place values were related with low management intensity, while values for tourism increase with land-uses embedding cultural facilities. We discuss monetary and non-monetary values in the light of urban green infrastructure strategies and indicate potentials for urban planning and management to proactively alter the provision of cultural ecosystem services through specific configurations of land-uses and management intensity.

Cultural ecosystem services as a gateway for improving urban sustainability

Quality of life in cities depends, among other things, on ecosystem services (ES) generated locally within the cities by multifunctional blue and green infrastructure. Successfully protecting green infrastructure in locations also attractive for urban development requires deliberate processes of planning and policy formulation as well as broad public support. We propose that cultural ecosystem services (CES) may serve as a useful gateway for addressing and managing nature in cities. CES can help embed multifunctional ecosystems and the services they generate in urban landscapes and in the minds of urbanites and planners, and thus serve an important role in addressing urban sustainability. In the city, CES may be more directly experienced, their benefits more readily appreciated, and the environment-to-benefit linkages more easily and intuitively understood by the beneficiaries relative to many material ES. Thus, we suggest that a focus on CES supply can be a good starting point for increasing the awareness among urban residents also of the importance of ES. Furthermore, CES are often generated interdependently with other critical ES and engaging people in the stewardship of CES could provide increased awareness of the benefits of a larger group of urban non-cultural ES.