Perceptions of ecosystem services across civerse cultures and ecosystems

Abstract

Ecosystem services is a young field that has been expanding exponentially for the last 20 years. This expansion has meant many questions and gaps continue to be revealed, not least how individuals perceive ecosystems, the dependencies that humans have on them, and the value of the contributions that nature makes to our their lives. Understanding perceptions is essential for facilitating the adoption of ecosystem services research outputs into policy mechanisms, and to better inform research directions.
In the following study, I explore perceptions of experts from research and management across eight globally distributed research sites across four continents, to uncover how they perceive those ecosystems and human dependencies on them. I first give a General Introduction, which outlines key themes related to global change, biodiversity and ecosystem services. I also give detail about the research
locations included in this study and the questions I seek to answer.
In Chapter 1, I establish baselines of ecosystem services through 103 interviews with stakeholders within each location. Using presence/absence and importance scale responses from interviewees I test whether these baselines are unique to each site, and assess whether there are similarities between sites and with how services are perceived across the sites.
In Chapter 2, I explore services that elicit uncertainty and disagreement from interviewees from Chapter 1. I use the service itself and attributes of the interviewees to determine whether these can predict uncertain answers, and areas of disagreement. As this chapter compares individual responses at sites, I restrict my data to two sites with higher numbers of interviewees.
In Chapter 3 I use text analysis techniques to explore the interview notes and transcripts to uncover values that interviewees express about the research sites. The responses are framed around questions about ecosystem services the sites provide, offering greater detail and insight into how interviewees relate to each location.
Finally, in Chapter 4 I take a narrative form, using the words of the interviewees to describe how people live and interact with the research locations, and how they are adapting to changing conditions. The chapter was written as part of a public outreach project, Klimagarten 2085, which explored human adaptations to climate change.
In the General Discussion I draw broader conclusions about the key findings and wider relevance of this work, as well as outlining future directions.