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. 2012 Jun 5;109(23):8812-9.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1114773109. Epub 2012 May 21.

Contributions of cultural services to the ecosystem services agenda

Terry C Daniel  1 , Andreas Muhar, Arne Arnberger, Olivier Aznar, James W Boyd, Kai M A Chan, Robert Costanza, Thomas Elmqvist, Courtney G Flint, Paul H Gobster, Adrienne Grêt-Regamey, Rebecca Lave, Susanne Muhar, Marianne Penker, Robert G Ribe, Thomas Schauppenlehner, Thomas Sikor, Ihor Soloviy, Marja Spierenburg, Karolina Taczanowska, Jordan Tam, Andreas von der Dunk
Affiliations

Contributions of cultural services to the ecosystem services agenda

Terry C Daniel et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

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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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Examples of cultural services represented within an ES framework.
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