Cultural ecosystem services (ES) are consistently recognized but not yet adequately defined or integrated within the ES framework. A substantial body of models, methods, and data relevant to cultural services has been developed within the social and behavioral sciences before and outside of the ES approach. A selective review of work in landscape aesthetics, cultural heritage, outdoor recreation, and spiritual significance demonstrates opportunities for operationally defining cultural services in terms of socioecological models, consistent with the larger set of ES. Such models explicitly link ecological structures and functions with cultural values and benefits, facilitating communication between scientists and stakeholders and enabling economic, multicriterion, deliberative evaluation and other methods that can clarify tradeoffs and synergies involving cultural ES. Based on this approach, a common representation is offered that frames cultural services, along with all ES, by the relative contribution of relevant ecological structures and functions and by applicable social evaluation approaches. This perspective provides a foundation for merging ecological and social science epistemologies to define and integrate cultural services better within the broader ES framework.

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Contributions of cultural services to the ecosystem services agenda.

Innovation Diffusion as a Spatial Process

Agricultural land-use change and its drivers in mountain landscapes: A case study in the Pyrenees

Remote sensing of ecosystem services:a systematic review

Fifty years of change in Central European grassland vegetation: Large losses in species richness and animal-pollinated plants

Using GIS to analyse long-term cultural landscape change in Southern Germany

This study analyses changes in the landscape of a sector of Upper Franconia (Bavaria, Germany) by comparing land use changes over four time periods (1850, 1900, 1960, 2000). Geodetic and other data derived from the Bavarian real estate tax and land register were entered into various temporal layers of a land register-based vector GIS. This multitemporal GIS permits a precise analysis of the historical structure and development of landscapes on the basis of land plots. In 1850, the study area was almost exclusively agricultural in structure. Woodlands made up only 18% of the total surface. Rough pastures and wastelands, which covered about 9% of the total surface, were used for grazing. During the first half of the 20th century, the proportion of wooded areas increased considerably. The rough pastures that had formerly been a typical feature of the region nearly disappeared during this period. Agricultural use declined to less than 50% of the total area. In the course of the period between 1960 and 2000, the livestock industry has become an almost exclusively indoor activity. Village development has started spilling over into the adjacent fields. The causes and background of these changes are discussed in detail. From an ecological standpoint, the land use categories surveyed in this analysis of landscape change can be regarded as vegetation types, thereby constituting habitats for specialized biota. The intensity and frequency of any type of land use creates a certain disturbance regime, which disrupts and controls the succession in a certain way. The concept of categories of change incorporated into the GIS helps to evaluate these habitat types and the rate of change more accurately, e.g. for nature conservation purposes.

Analysis of land-use change in a sector of Upper Franconia (Bavaria, Germany) since 1850 using land register records

After a long period of emigration from the rural areas in the European Alps, a trend reversal can be observed in the last quarter of the 20th century. However, this “new immigration” affects the Alpine countries unevenly in terms of both timing and intensity. Furthermore, growing spatial mobility and consequential transformation of settlements involve several population segments with diverse motives for their movements. This article sketches the temporal development and the extent of the diverse immigration and circulation patterns for the individual countries of the Alps and identifies knowledge gaps. Furthermore, opportunities and risks of the new immigration for both the “new highlanders” as well as the indigenous communities are briefly discussed. The authors conclude with an outline of further needs for basic research in this field and an appeal to leverage the new immigration for rural development. The article was already discussed within the “Demography and Employment” working group of the...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/mounresedeve.32.2.235

New Immigration Into the European Alps: Emerging Research Issues

Due to agricultural abandonment and the urban preference for ‘wilderness’ over ‘rural’ areas, abandoned settlements and rewilding grasslands are often the last traces of agriculture in today’s prot...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01426397.2018.1495183

Among rewilding mountains: grassland conservation and abandoned settlements in the Northern Apennines

This article investigates the impact of culture on population mobility, settled landscapes, and regional sustainability in the European Alps over the past c.1500 years. For older developments, the ...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00291951.2017.1317661

Oliver Bender

Papers

Using GIS to analyse long-term cultural landscape change in Southern Germany

Analysis of land-use change in a sector of Upper Franconia (Bavaria, Germany) since 1850 using land register records

New Immigration Into the European Alps: Emerging Research Issues

Among rewilding mountains: grassland conservation and abandoned settlements in the Northern Apennines

The cultural embeddedness of population mobility in the Alps: Consequences for sustainable development