Mapping forest ecosystem services: From providing units to beneficiaries

Some of the main research questions in the assessment ecosystem services include how to integrate ecological and social information into the analysis and how to make it spatially explicit. We mapped six ecosystem services delivered by forests in the Sierra Nevada Mountains (south-east Spain) from the supply- to the demand-sides, taking into account the influence of protected areas on the capacity of supply services. Semi-structured interviews and geographical information system sources were used to map the supply-side, whereas 205 face-to-face questionnaires were distributed to assess and map the demand-side. Our results show the existence of consistent ecosystem service bundles in terms of both the supply- and demand-sides, particularly between erosion control–recreational hunting and between mushroom harvesting–nature tourism. We found a spatial scale mismatch for the erosion control, with its supply at the local scale and its demand at the regional–national scales, with implications at the institutional scale at which it should be managed. Consequently, mapping both the supply- and demand-sides is essential for environmental decision making because it can indicate where management interventions should be focused, either by defining high-priority areas for protection or defining the institutional scale at which these services should be managed.