Landscape complexity perception and representation in a wine-growing region with the designation of origin in the Loire Valley (France): a cultural ecosystem service?

Abstract

Ecosystem services related to biodiversity, including cultural services, are essential for agricultural production such as viticulture. In agricultural landscapes, pesticides and mechanization threaten biodiversity, lead to landscape simplification and may reduce ecosystem services. On the other hand, consumers are more and more aware of environmental issues in food production. We investigated if landscape complexity, including soil management practices, was (i) appreciated by visitors and (ii) presented by winegrowers and tourism professionals in the French vineyards with the designation of geographical origin (DGO) ‘Coteaux du Layon’. Our goal was to determine if landscape complexity provides cultural ecosystem services such as aesthetics beneficial for the wine trade and the DGO region's attractiveness. We analyzed the iconographic content and the composition of landscape photographs on 50 websites to investigate if local winegrowers and tourism professionals associate biodiversity in the landscape and soil management practices with wine promotion. A questionnaire was realized to study the perception of local landscapes by interviewing 192 visitors of the region. The benefits of landscape complexity and soil management practices favoring biodiversity in viticulture were known and appreciated by many visitors, even if photographs of wine and traditional practices appeared to encourage wine purchasing. Local winegrowers’ representation of the DGO region only partially served these preferences; instead they mainly presented the wine-growing region by photographs focusing on wine bottles and vineyards. Consumer's preferences showed that complex landscapes could provide cultural ecosystem services that winegrowers are still less aware of. Therefore, complexity-targeted landscape planning including vegetation cover in soil management should be included in policy recommendations as agroecological measures for sustainable DGO production.

Valorización del paisaje y turismo: mirada desde la producción científica

“…La valorización del bien patrimonial nace de las imágenes visuales con respecto a la calidad del entorno (Csurgó & Smith, 2021;Karasov et al, 2020;Martínez et al, 2018;Polat & Demirel, 2016;Smith & Ram, 2017;Yang & Dobbie, 2019), es decir, de que la belleza natural y la cultural se encuentren en un equilibrio armónico con la sociedad circundante (Petrovič et al, 2021;Tieskens et al, 2018), con la finalidad de que exista una influencia en el confort y satisfacción emocional y psicológica de la persona que consume el panorama (Golosova et al, 2019;Petrovič et al, 2021). Este valor estético representa un componente sustancial en los servicios turísticos, pues es una herramienta que le permite al turista apreciar los elementos paisajísticos agradables a la vista (González, 2019;Hervé et al, 2020;Pardo, 2017;Zaraś-Januszkiewicz et al, 2020).…”

Vineyard Management and Its Impacts on Soil Biodiversity, Functions, and Ecosystem Services

“…The vineyard should be considered as a consociation, formed by the vines and the underlying grasses, both complementing the functions and ecosystem services of the vineyard. Associated plant diversity in vineyards may contribute to multiple ESs, such as mitigating soil erosion and, preserving soil fertility, biocontrol of vine pests by promoting colonization of vine rows by their natural predators (see in the following paragraphs and Nicholls et al, 2000), aesthetic value of viticultural landscape (Hervé et al, 2020), and conservation of endemic species (Gillespie and Wratten, 2012). Studying the benefits and ecosystem services supported by spontaneous flora in vineyard agroecosystems is a quite novel topic (Garcia et al, 2018), but findings suggest that vegetation cover should be used wherever soil and climate conditions are favorable.…”

A Socio-Ecological Approach to Conserve and Manage Riverscapes in Designated Areas: Cases of the Loire River Valley and Dordogne Basin, France

“…Both the Loire River Valley and the Dordogne River basin are registered on the UNESCO list due to their unique biocultural heritage formed over many centuries of interactions between the river, the land, and the populations. The chateaux and historic architecture in the Loire River Valley manifest the Renaissance history in France; the gastronomy, horticultural and agricultural practices are developed relying on the riverine environments, such as viticulture [50,84]. Agriculture (part of which is irrigated) is the economically and politically dominant activity in the Dordogne River basin.…”