Spatial patterns of cultural ecosystem services provision in Southern Patagonia

Abstract

Context Although there is a need to develop a spatially explicit methodological approach that addresses the social importance of cultural ecosystem services for regional planning, few studies have analysed the spatial distribution on the cultural ecosystem services based on social perceptions. Objective The main objective of this study was to identify cultural ecosystem service hot-spots, and factors that characterize such hot-spots and define the spatial associations between cultural ecosystem services in Southern Patagonia (Argentina). Methods The study was carried out in Southern Patagonia (243.9 thousand km 2 ) located between 46°a nd 55°SL with the Andes mountains on the western fringe and the Atlantic Ocean on the eastern fringe of the study area. The study region has a range of different vegetation types (grasslands, shrub-lands, peat-lands and forests) though the cold arid steppe is the main vegetation type. We used geo-tagged digital images that local people and visitors posted in the Panoramio web platform to identify hot-spots of four cultural ecosystem services (aesthetic value, existence value, recreation and local identity) and relate these hot-spots with social and biophysical landscape features. Results Aesthetic value was the main cultural service tagged by people, followed by the existence value for biodiversity conservation, followed by local identity and then recreational activity. The spatial distribution of these cultural ecosystem services are associated with different social and biophysical characteristics, such as the presence of water bodies, vegetation types, marine and terrestrial fauna, protected areas, urbanization, accessibility and tourism offer. The most important factors are the presence of water in Santa Cruz and tourism offer in Tierra del Fuego.Conclusions Our results demonstrate that this methodology is useful for assessing cultural ecosystem services at the regional scale, especially in areas with low data availability and field accessibility, such as Southern Patagonia. We also identify new research challenges that can be addressed in cultural ecosystem services research through the use of this method.

Crowdsourcing indicators for cultural ecosystem services: A geographically weighted approach for mountain landscapes

“…The analysis of photoseries from platforms such as Flickr and Panoramio has already been shown to be a suitable proxy for the empirical estimation of visiting frequency (Da Rugna et al, 2012, Kisilevich et al, 2010, Produit et al, 2014, Sun et al, 2013, Wood et al, 2013. More recently online photo libraries have been used to assess CES (Allan et al, 2015, Arkema at al., 2015, Casalegno et al, 2013, Martínez Pastur et al, 2015, Keeler et al, 2015, Nahuelhual et al, 2013, Richards and Friess, 2015, Willemen et al, 2015.…”

Marine and Coastal Cultural Ecosystem Services: knowledge gaps and research priorities

“…Sociocultural, ecological, and economic values are all crucial to understand the importance, meaning, and worth of CES benefits to human societies. Hence, they need to be considered together to support environmental management and decision-making (Gómez-Baggethun and Barton 2013, Martín-López et al 2012, Martín-López et al 2014. Most assessments of marine and coastal CES in our literature synthesis have a single valuation perspective, either sociocultural, economic, or ecological (Suppl.…”

Ecosystem services in forests of Calabria: stakeholders’ perception

“…Tale analisi consente di fornire delle informazioni utili nella gestione del territorio e supportare i decision maker nella definizione di strategie di valorizzazione delle risorse naturali a scala locale. Il successo internazionale del concetto di servizi ecosistemici è dovuto alla sua capacità di integrare gli aspetti ecologici, sociali ed economici nello sviluppo delle politiche ambientali (De Groot et al 2010, Martínez Pastur et al 2016. Per quanto concerne l'aspetto sociale, la valutazione della domanda da parte della società per i servizi ecosistemici si basa sulla raccolta e sull'analisi delle opinioni, delle percezioni e delle preferenze degli attori sociali, intesi come gruppi di interesse (p.…”