Recording Manifestations of Cultural Ecosystem Services in the Landscape

Attempts at assessing the values people attach to ecosystems reveal profound methodological gaps regarding the non-material domains associated with aesthetic, spiritual or heritage values. This paper presents a new approach for trying to grasp these intangible benefits—conceptualised as cultural ecosystem services (CES)—based on the assumption that making use of CES leaves discernible marks on the physical landscape. We explore the potential for tracing visible manifestations of CES in a field walk-based landscape analysis. The results provide information on the character, significance, and spatial distribution of CES and allow for analysis in terms of correlations with landscape features or ecosystem services bundles. Based on our results, the method has two main strengths: 1) as an approach suitable for statistical analysis and integration with spatially explicit and quantitative data in comprehensive landscape assessment; and 2) as a simplified version which can generate valuable data for exploratory or complementary uses.