Landscape Identity and Recreation in the cultural landscape of Monte Verde, Minas Gerais , Brazil

Landscape functions can be defined as the capacity of landscapes to provide goods and services that satisfy human needs (DE GROOT et al., 2002). The capacity of landscapes for providing immaterial services such as scenic beauty, inspiration, historical and cultural heritage as well as landscape identity are linked to preferences and perceptions of landscape users and associated to cultural ecosystem services (CES). While preferences by tourists it is given much attention to preferences by local inhabitants of touristic destinations has been less studied. It is however likely that, preferences of landscape users such as local inhabitants and tourists are different as those groups perceive and relate differently to the local landscape . The main question that this study seeks to answer is which CES are provided by the cultural landscape of the district of Monte Verde, in Minas Gerais, Brazil, and how these ecosystem services are used by the local population and tourists? To do so, we applied a photo questionnaire to identify and map the types of CES of the Monte Verde landscape. 100 photo questionnaires were applied to summer season tourists and residents of the Monte Verde district. Our results show that broadly local population and tourists value the same landscape land cover patterns for example Atlantic forest and the mountainous relief. However these landcovers are associate to different landscape While local populations associate those landscape features to landscape identity tourists associate it with recreational practices such as hiking and sightseeing. This work allowed to correlate the spatial patterns of the landscape with cultural ecosystem services used by the locals and tourists. And, with this, provide subsidies to the public policies that meet the preferences and consider the perceptions of these groups of landscape users.