Qualitative impact assessment of land management interventions on Ecosystem Services (“QEIA”). Report 3.7: Cultural Services

The focus of this project was to provide a rapid qualitative assessment of land management interventions on Ecosystem Services (ES) proposed for inclusion in Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes. This involved a review of the current evidence base by ten expert teams drawn from the independent research community in a consistent series of ten Evidence Reviews. These reviews were undertaken rapidly at Defra’s request and together captured more than 2000 individual sources of evidence. These reviews were then used to inform an Integrated Assessment (IA) to provide a more accessible summary of these evidence reviews with a focus on capturing the actions with the greatest potential magnitude of change for the intended ES and their potential co-benefits and trade-offs across the Ecosystem Services and Ecosystem Services Indicators. The final IA table captured scores for 741 actions across 8 Themes, 33 ES and 53 ES-indicators. This produced a total possible matrix of 39,273 scores. It should be noted that this piece of work is just one element of the wider underpinning work Defra has commissioned to support the development of the ELM schemes. The project was carried out in two phases with the environmental and provisioning services commissioned in Phase 1 and cultural and regulatory services in a follow-on Phase 2. Due to the urgency of the need for these evidence reviews, there was insufficient time for systematic reviews and therefore the reviews relied on the knowledge of the team of the peer reviewed and grey literature with some rapid additional checking of recent reports and papers. This limitation of the review process was clearly explained and understood by Defra. The review presented here is one of the ten evidence reviews which informed the IA

Qualitative Impact Assessment of Land Management Interventions on Ecosystem Services (“QEIA”). Report-1: Executive Summary: QEIA Evidence Review & Integrated Assessment

The focus of this project was to provide an expert-led, rapid qualitative assessment of land management interventions on Ecosystem Services (ES) proposed for inclusion in Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes. This involved a review of the current evidence base for 741 land management actions on 33 Ecosystem Services and 53 Ecosystem Service indicators by ten teams involving 45 experts drawn from the independent research community in a consistent series of Evidence Reviews covering the broad topics of: • Air quality • Greenhouse gas emissions • Soils • Water management • Biodiversity: croplands • Biodiversity: improved grassland • Biodiversity: semi-natural habitats • Biodiversity: integrated systems-based actions • Carbon sequestration • Cultural services (including recreation, geodiversity and regulatory services). It should be noted that this piece of work is just one element of the wider underpinning work Defra has commissioned to support the development of the ELM schemes

Qualitative impact assessment of land management interventions on Ecosystem Services (‘QEIA’). Report-2: Integrated Assessment

The focus of this project was to provide an expert-led, rapid qualitative assessment of land management interventions on Ecosystem Services (ES) proposed for inclusion in Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes. This involved a review of the current evidence base for 741 land management actions on 33 Ecosystem Services and 53 Ecosystem Service indicators by ten expert teams drawn from the independent research community in a consistent series of ten Evidence Reviews covering the broad topics of; • Air quality • Greenhouse gas emissions • Soils • Water management • Biodiversity: croplands • Biodiversity: improved grassland • Biodiversity: semi-natural habitats • Biodiversity: integrated systems-based actions • Carbon sequestration • Cultural services (including recreation, geodiversity and regulatory services) These reviews were undertaken rapidly at Defra’s request by ten teams involving 45 experts who together captured more than 2,400 individual sources of evidence. This was followed by the Integrated Assessment (IA) reported here to provide a more accessible summary of these evidence reviews with a focus on capturing the actions with the greatest potential magnitude of change for the intended ES, and their potential co-benefits and trade-offs for the other ES