The relationship between social values for ecosystem services and global land cover: An empirical analysis

Considerable effort has been directed into separate but related research foci—the study of ecosystem services and participatory mapping methods. The two research foci intersect in the mapping of place-based values, an operational form of social values for ecosystem services that uses public participation GIS (PPGIS) methods. The social valuation of ecosystem services through participatory mapping offers an alternative valuation approach to economic valuation of ecosystem services. This study analyzes the spatial associations between global land cover which provides a proxy indicator of ecosystem services, and place-based values from 11 PPGIS studies completed in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand that comprise a diverse set of temperate ecoregions. Key findings include: the highest frequencies of social values for ecosystem services were associated with forested land cover; water bodies were highly valuable relative to area occupied; and agricultural land and areas of permanent snow and ice were least valuable. Most land cover classes demonstrated high diversity of social values. The importance of different land cover types varies based on the selected evaluation criteria. Additional research is needed to determine whether economic and social valuation approaches provide complementary, contradictory, or redundant measures of the importance of landscapes for providing ecosystem services.