Policies and strategies for tree management and protection on a national, regional, and local level have not sufficiently considered differences between rural and urban areas. We used expert knowledge to compare rural and urban areas in a case study evaluating the relative importance of ecosystem services (ES) in policy development. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and focus group discussions were used to rank 17 ES, representing four classes of services: provisioning, regulating, habitat, and cultural. The results indicated that effective protection strategies, beyond simply increasing general tree cover, should consider specific benefits trees provide to local communities. We discuss the role of objective prioritization of ES delivered by trees in urban and rural areas and their consequences for decision-making processes.

Studies on society and the environment interface are often based on simple questionnaires that do not allow for an in-depth analysis. Research conducted with geo-questionnaires is an increasingly common method. However, even if data collected via a geo-questionnaire are available, the shared databases provide limited information due to personal data protection. In the article, we present open databases that overcome those limitations. They are the result of the iTre-es project concerning public opinion on the benefits provided by trees and shrubs in four different research areas. The databases provide information on the location of trees that are valuable to the residents, the distances from the respondents’ residence place, their attitude toward tree removal, socio-demographic variables, attachment to the place of life, and environmental attitudes. The presentation of all these aspects was possible thanks to the appropriate aggregation of the results. A method to anonymize the respondents is presented. We discuss the collected data and their possible areas of application.

No abstract

In the original publication, the first and last name of all the authors were inadvertently swapped. It is corrected in this correction.The article ''Ranking ecosystem services delivered by trees in urban and rural areas'', written by Patrycja Przewoz ´na, Krzysztof Ma ˛czka, Marcin Mielewczyk, Adam Inglot, Piotr Matczak, was originally published electronically on the publisher's internet portal on

No abstract