How integrating 'socio-cultural values' into ecosystem services evaluations can give meaning to value indicators

Rethinking ecosystem services to better address and navigate cultural values

Ecosystem Services beyond Valuation, Regulation, and Philanthropy: Integrating Consumer Values into the Economy

Ecosystem services have been identified as a central link between society, or human systems, and the structure and function of natural systems (e.g., U.S. LTER 2007, MEA 2005). A fundamental economic problem is that while almost everyone—environmental groups, policy makers, and broad segments of the general public—seems to believe ecosystem services are valuable, the available public policy too...

Cultural ecosystem services of mountain regions: Modelling the aesthetic value

Mountain regions meet an increasing demand for pleasant landscapes, offering many cultural ecosystem services to both their residents and tourists. As a result of global change, land managers and policy makers are faced with changes to this landscape and need efficient evaluation techniques to assess cultural ecosystem services. This study provides a spatially explicit modelling approach to est...

How Ecosystem Services Knowledge and Values Influence Farmers' Decision-Making

The ecosystem services (ES) concept has emerged and spread widely recently, to enhance the importance of preserving ecosystems through global change in order to maintain their benefits for human well-being. Numerous studies consider various dimensions of the interactions between ecosystems and land use via ES, but integrated research addressing the complete feedback loop between biodiversity, E...

The challenges of incorporating cultural ecosystem services into environmental assessment.

The ecosystem services concept is used to make explicit the diverse benefits ecosystems provide to people, with the goal of improving assessment and, ultimately, decision-making. Alongside material benefits such as natural resources (e.g., clean water, timber), this concept includes-through the 'cultural' category of ecosystem services-diverse non-material benefits that people obtain through in...