Landscape values and demands of local stakeholders elicited through escenic preferences and ecosystem services valuation in a Cultural Landscape of Mediterranean Spain

Biocultural landscapes of the Mediterranean Basin represent a symbiotic millennial relationship between society and ecosystems, constructed interactively upon both the dwellers needs and their knowledge of landscape processes. Human perceptual experience is the basis of knowledge building but, as modern theories about ‘embodied cognition’ states, the process of perception is not a merely passive information of capturing. In fact, it is a direct and continuous process of getting meaning from the environment, which plays a key role in the everyday functioning of people in their landscape.
Management practices are the product of local ecological memory subject to a permanent revision according to human changing of cultural knowledge, needs and aspirations. People scenic preferences are strongly linked to socio-cultural background, livelihood and ecological knowledge, and are picked up from the environment when personal capabilities, needs and aspirations matches with landscape features. The ecosystem services framework, understood as the contribution of ecosystems to human wellbeing, harmonizes very well with the concept of affordances, being a very good tool to analyse the human-landscape relationship.
We aimed to evaluate the relationships between culture and landscape in our study area (Sierra Morena, Andalucía, Spain) visualizing trade-off and synergies between the values that different local stakeholders assign to land uses. To do so, we analysed landscape preferences and the ecosystem services subjective valuation of local stakeholders trough face-to-face surveys, interviewing also local experts. We used local landscape photographs as stimuli, considering vision as the main human perception channel.
Apart from some consensual preferences for vigorous vegetation, we found consistent differences between stakeholders. Urban people prefer pine and Mediterranean forests and were guided by scenic beauty. Elders instead prefer grassland, and farmers prefer landscapes with olive trees, both guided by a subsistence rationale. Environmentalists prefer grassland and Mediterranean forest because of their perceived ecological values.
Stakeholder valuation by experts and local population showed a wider range of ecosystem services supply in medium disturbance landscapes (grassland, mosaic and ecological olive culture) than in wild (Mediterranean dry forest) or very anthropic landscapes (pine afforestation and olive culture). Urban people give higher values to pine forest and olive orchards with cultural services supply. Elders value high the services of dehesa grassland, while farmers give high values to organic olives and dry forest. Lastly, environmentalists value more grassland, Mediterranean forest and organic olive culture than standard olive culture and pines. Those differences explain clearly the trade-off and synergies of stakeholders for landscape management options.