Stakeholder perspectives on ecosystem service supply and ecosystem service demand bundles

Recent developments in Ecosystem Service (ES) research show a growing interest in the concept of ES bundles for informing the effective management of landscapes. While the supply of ES bundles was biophysically assessed, there has been little research about the perception of ES bundles, neither in terms of their supply, nor of their demand. This research investigates how various stakeholders perceive the delivery of ES supply bundles across different landscapes and how this differs from the ES demand bundles they request. A questionnaire survey (n = 858) was carried out on the basis of landscape photographs with local farmers, local inhabitants, and visitors in the region of South Tyrol in the Central Alps. The results show that the different stakeholder groups identify identical ES supply bundles (i.e. experiential service, life maintenance service, agroservice bundle) and associate each with a similar set of landscape types. Stakeholders, however, differ in terms of their expressed demand for ES bundles. These findings suggest that stakeholders experience different (spatial) mismatches between the supply and demand of ES, potentially leading to stakeholder conflicts in landscape management. This study concludes by discussing these potential conflicts across different landscapes and in the context of future land use and management decisions

A bird’s eye view over ecosystem services in Natura 2000 sites across Europe

Recent ‘New Conservation’ approaches called for more ecosystem services (ES) emphasis in conservation. We analysed data from 3757 Natura 2000 special protection areas (SPAs) and translated positive and negative impacts listed by conservation managers into indicators of the use of nine provisioning, regulating and cultural ES. Overall, the use of ES is considered by SPA managers to affect conservation goals more negatively than positively. ES associated with livestock keeping and fodder production are recorded as having the highest fraction of positive impacts on SPAs, ranging from 88% and 78% in the Boreal biogeographic region to 20% and 6% in the Mediterranean. The use of ES varied according to dominant habitat class, highlighting the dependence of specific ES on associated ecosystem functions. For instance, fibre production was the predominant ES throughout forest habitats while crop, fodder and livestock exhibit similar patterns of dominance across agricultural landscapes. In contrast, the use of wild food and recreation activities are seen as causing mainly negative effects across all habitats. Our analysis suggests that most uses of ES result in negative effects on conservation goals. These outcomes should be considered when implementing future conservation strategies

Proposed nomenclature for Pseudallescheria, Scedosporium and related genera

As a result of fundamental changes in the International Code of Nomenclature on the use of separate names for sexual and asexual stages of fungi, generic names of many groups should be reconsidered. Members of the ECMM/ISHAM working group on Pseudallescheria/Scedosporium infections herein advocate a novel nomenclature for genera and species in Pseudallescheria, Scedosporium and allied taxa. The generic names Parascedosporium, Lomentospora, Petriella, Petriellopsis, and Scedosporium are proposed for a lineage within Microascaceae with mostly Scedosporium anamorphs producing slimy, annellidic conidia. Considering that Scedosporium has priority over Pseudallescheria and that Scedosporium prolificans is phylogenetically distinct from the other Scedosporium species, some name changes are proposed. Pseudallescheria minutispora and Petriellidium desertorum are renamed as Scedosporium minutisporum and S. desertorum, respectively. Scedosporium prolificans is renamed as Lomentospora prolificans

Using geographically weighted models to explore how crowdsourced landscape perceptions relate to landscape physical characteristics

This study explores how formal measures of landscape wildness (i.e. absence of human artefacts, perceived naturalness of land cover, remoteness from mechanised access, and ruggedness of the terrain) correlate with crowdsourced measures of landscape aesthetic quality as captured in Scenic-Or-Not data for Great Britain. It evaluates multiple linear regression (MLR) and two spatially varying coefficients models: geographically weighted regression (GWR) and multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR). The MLR provided a baseline model in an analysis of national data, exhibiting the presence of spatially autocorrelated residuals and suggesting that geographically weighted models may be appropriate. A standard GWR was found to exacerbate local collinearity between covariates, both overfitting and underfitting the model with highly varied and localised results. This was due to its single one-size-fits-all bandwidth and the assumption that all relationships between the target and predictor variables operate over the same spatial scale. MGWR relaxes this assumption by determining parameter-specific bandwidths, mitigating the local collinearity issues found in a standard GWR and resulting in more spatially stable and consistent coefficient estimates. The findings also indicated that the relationship between some covariates (such as remoteness) and perceived landscape quality varied little spatially, while clear gradients were found for other covariates. For example, naturalness was stronger in the north and west, ruggedness was stronger in the south and east, and the absence of human artefacts was weaker in Scotland and the north than in England and the south. Overall, the study showed that MGWR is more sensitive than GWR to the spatial heterogeneity in the statistical relationships between landscape factors and public perceptions. These findings provide nuanced understandings of how these relationships vary spatially, underscoring the value of such approaches in landscape scale analyses to support policy and planning. The discussion section of this paper considers the MGWR as the default geographically weighted model, assessing the potential for the use of crowdsourced data in landscape studies. In so doing, it illustrates how such approaches could be used to explore both subjective and objective landscape evaluations

Ordering 'wilderness': Variations in public representations of wilderness and their spatial distributions

Wilderness has recently re-emerged as a key landscape quality in the public debate in Europe, experiencing renewed appreciation in terms of tourism and nature conservation. At the same time, wilderness has turned into a critical matter of conflict, calling for a better understanding of the public’s varied views on wilderness and the spatial localisation of areas of potential conflict. In this paper, we explore the plurality of existing public wilderness representations combining qualitative evidence from 21 semi-structured interviews with quantitative data from a large-scale questionnaire survey (n = 858) conducted in the region of South Tyrol in the Central Alps. This is complemented with a GIS-based approach to quantify and map the geographic coverage of the different representations of wilderness. Our study reveals three distinct public wilderness representations, i.e. ‘Area with no human impact’, ‘Remote and large area’, and ‘Area where nature can self-develop’, differing in terms of selection and weighting of wilderness attributes. The translation of wilderness representations into maps shows clear differences in spatial distribution, location, and extent of areas with high wilderness quality across the three representations. We further demonstrate the added value of our approach by comparing the results with a standardised, expert-based approach on wilderness quality mapping, finding that the extent of areas of high wilderness quality significantly varies depending on whether the mapping is based on experts' or public's representation of wilderness. We therefore conclude that recognising public wilderness representations and their plurality is fundamental for identifying areas of potential conflict and sustainably managing wild landscapes