Cultural Ecosystem Services
- NOTOC**
Cultural Ecosystem Services
Cultural ecosystem services are the nonmaterial benefits that people obtain through their relationships with ecosystems, landscapes, plants, animals, water, and other elements of the natural world. They include recreation, aesthetic enjoyment, spiritual experience, cultural heritage, education, inspiration, social interaction, cultural identity, and a sense of place.
Unlike ecosystem services that can often be measured through physical outputs such as food, timber, or water, cultural ecosystem services frequently involve experiences, relationships, memories, traditions, meanings, and values. This makes them particularly important to human wellbeing while also making them difficult to measure using conventional economic or ecological indicators.
Research on cultural ecosystem services increasingly emphasizes that people do not simply receive benefits from nature. Cultural benefits emerge through interactions among particular environments, cultural practices, communities, histories, and individual experiences.
Nature, Culture, and Human Wellbeing
Contact with nature can contribute to wellbeing in many different ways. Parks, forests, rivers, lakes, wetlands, mountains, coastlines, agricultural landscapes, and other environments provide opportunities for recreation, relaxation, reflection, education, social interaction, creativity, and emotional restoration.
These benefits can extend beyond individual enjoyment. Natural places may contribute to community cohesion, shared identity, intergenerational relationships, cultural continuity, and collective memory. Familiar landscapes may become symbols of home or community and can therefore have significance far beyond their physical characteristics.
Research has increasingly explored relationships between cultural ecosystem services and subjective wellbeing. Experiences in nature may contribute to happiness, psychological restoration, belonging, social connection, inspiration, and opportunities to develop knowledge and perspective.
The cultural benefits of nature are not distributed or experienced equally. Age, income, accessibility, cultural background, geographic location, mobility, social relationships, and personal experience can all influence which ecosystems people use and which benefits they receive.
Cultural Identity, Heritage, and Sense of Place
One of the most important dimensions of cultural ecosystem services is the connection between landscapes and identity.
People frequently develop strong attachments to particular forests, rivers, mountains, coastlines, wetlands, farms, parks, neighborhoods, or other places. These attachments may emerge through personal experience, family history, cultural traditions, livelihoods, religious practices, recreation, or community history.
Sense of place describes the meanings and emotional attachments people associate with particular locations. Such relationships can influence attitudes toward conservation, development, restoration, and land-use change.
Cultural heritage is similarly embedded in landscapes. Historic agricultural systems, sacred forests, traditional water bodies, fishing grounds, culturally significant species, archaeological sites, and long-established settlement patterns may simultaneously possess ecological and cultural importance.
Changes to these landscapes can therefore represent more than environmental change. Development, ecosystem degradation, displacement, sea-level rise, changing land use, or loss of culturally important species may also affect identity, memory, heritage, and community relationships.
Recreation, Tourism, and the Experience of Nature
Recreation is among the most frequently studied cultural ecosystem services.
Natural and semi-natural environments provide opportunities for hiking, walking, wildlife observation, fishing, boating, swimming, photography, sightseeing, camping, outdoor education, and many other activities. Urban parks and forests can provide similar experiences close to where large populations live.
Tourism can increase public access to cultural ecosystem services while supporting local economies and encouraging appreciation of landscapes and biodiversity. Ecotourism and nature-based tourism are therefore often included in assessments of cultural ecosystem services.
Tourism can also create conflicts. Heavy visitation may damage ecosystems, crowd culturally important places, disrupt communities, or diminish the experiences visitors seek. Different users may also value the same landscape in different ways. A location valued for solitude, for example, may simultaneously be promoted for intensive recreation.
Protected-area management increasingly attempts to understand these differences rather than treating all visitors as having identical motivations or experiences.
Urban Green and Blue Spaces
Cultural ecosystem services are especially significant in cities because urban parks, forests, rivers, wetlands, waterfronts, gardens, and other green and blue spaces may provide residents with some of their most frequent opportunities to interact with nature.
Research on urban cultural ecosystem services has examined recreation, aesthetic experience, cultural heritage, social interaction, emotional wellbeing, environmental education, physical activity, spiritual experience, and neighborhood identity.
Urban planning can influence these benefits through park design, accessibility, vegetation, water features, recreational facilities, historical elements, transportation connections, and the distribution of green space.
An important issue is the relationship between the supply of cultural ecosystem services and public demand. A city may contain substantial green space while some communities remain poorly served because parks are inaccessible, culturally inappropriate, overcrowded, distant, or lack features residents value.
Consequently, researchers increasingly examine equity as well as the total quantity of urban green space.
Spirituality, Sacred Places, and Relational Values
Some relationships with ecosystems are difficult to describe simply as benefits or services.
Sacred forests, mountains, rivers, wetlands, culturally significant species, and other natural places can have spiritual, ceremonial, ancestral, or religious importance. Their value may depend upon relationships extending across generations rather than upon recreational or economic use.
This has led researchers to emphasize relational values: values arising from relationships between people and nature and from ideas about responsibility, identity, stewardship, kinship, and appropriate ways of living.
Relational perspectives challenge the assumption that nature's cultural importance can always be separated into individual services that can be independently measured or priced.
For some communities, protecting a forest, river, animal population, or sacred landscape may represent an ethical responsibility rather than a preference that can easily be exchanged for another benefit.
Indigenous and Local Cultural Values
Research involving Indigenous peoples and local communities has highlighted important limitations in conventional ecosystem-service frameworks.
Indigenous relationships with land and water may incorporate genealogy, spirituality, identity, subsistence, responsibility, ecological knowledge, social organization, and cultural continuity simultaneously. Separating these relationships into individual categories such as recreation, heritage, or spirituality may fail to represent how communities themselves understand them.
Studies involving Aboriginal peoples in Australia, Māori values in New Zealand, Indigenous communities in India, Pacific communities, Indigenous fishers, and Native American communities demonstrate the importance of incorporating locally defined values into environmental assessment.
Participatory research can allow communities to identify culturally significant locations and explain why they matter rather than requiring them to conform to predefined categories.
These approaches also raise questions of environmental justice. Conservation policies that protect ecosystems while excluding traditional practices or ignoring cultural relationships may protect ecological features while damaging the communities historically associated with them.
Measuring Cultural Ecosystem Services
Cultural ecosystem services present unusual measurement challenges because many of their benefits are subjective, intangible, culturally specific, and dependent upon human experience.
Researchers have developed a wide range of methods, including:
- surveys and questionnaires;
- interviews and focus groups;
- participatory mapping;
- Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS);
- subjective wellbeing indicators;
- economic valuation;
- visitor observations;
- landscape preference studies;
- social-network analysis;
- photographs and visual analysis;
- social-media posts and geotagged photographs;
- participatory deliberation;
- historical and archaeological evidence;
- spatial modeling; and
- combinations of social, ecological, and geographic data.
No single method captures every dimension of cultural value. Economic valuation may reveal willingness to pay for recreation or conservation but can have difficulty representing identity, spirituality, heritage, responsibility, and sacred relationships.
Participatory and qualitative methods can reveal these deeper meanings but may be more difficult to compare across large geographic areas.
For this reason, many researchers advocate combining multiple methods.
Mapping Cultural Values
Spatial mapping has become one of the most important tools for studying cultural ecosystem services.
People can identify places they associate with recreation, beauty, heritage, spirituality, wildlife, social interaction, education, or other values. These observations can be compared with landscape characteristics, accessibility, land ownership, protected areas, infrastructure, population distribution, and ecological information.
Mapping can reveal cultural-service hotspots as well as areas where competing values overlap.
It can also identify mismatches between places capable of supplying particular cultural experiences and the locations where demand for those experiences is greatest.
Tools such as participatory GIS and the Social Values for Ecosystem Services framework have made it possible to incorporate community perceptions more directly into spatial planning.
Social Media, Artificial Intelligence, and New Methods
Digital information has greatly expanded the scale at which cultural ecosystem services can be studied.
Geotagged photographs, visitor reviews, social-media posts, short videos, blogs, and other online information can reveal where people visit natural areas, what they do there, which landscape features attract attention, and what emotions or meanings they associate with particular places.
Computer vision can classify features appearing in photographs. Natural-language processing can analyze large collections of visitor comments. Machine-learning techniques can identify patterns across extensive landscapes, and newer studies have begun applying large language models to public perceptions of restored wetlands and other environments.
Citizen-science information can also be combined with machine learning and geographic analysis to map recreational and cultural values.
These technologies enable analysis across thousands of locations that would be difficult to study using interviews alone.
However, digital approaches also introduce biases. Social-media users do not represent entire populations, different demographic groups use platforms differently, and highly photographed locations may appear more culturally important simply because they attract more online activity.
Digital data therefore complement rather than replace direct engagement with communities.
Forests, Rivers, Wetlands, Coasts, and Agricultural Landscapes
Cultural ecosystem services occur across nearly every type of ecosystem.
Forests provide recreation, spiritual experiences, aesthetic enjoyment, education, cultural identity, traditional knowledge, and opportunities for social interaction.
Rivers and lakes may support recreation, fishing traditions, local identity, tourism, scenic appreciation, cultural heritage, and spiritual practices.
Wetlands provide cultural benefits alongside their better-known ecological functions. They may serve as places of recreation, education, heritage, spiritual significance, birdwatching, fishing, and community identity.
Coastal and marine environments support tourism, recreation, fishing cultures, seascape appreciation, cultural heritage, and long-established relationships between communities and marine species.
Agricultural landscapes can also have substantial cultural value. Traditional farms, terraces, vineyards, grazing systems, orchards, and rural mosaics may provide scenic beauty, heritage, biodiversity, tourism opportunities, traditional knowledge, and community identity.
Cultural ecosystem services therefore demonstrate that landscapes valued by people are not limited to areas considered wilderness.
Conservation, Planning, and Decision-Making
Recognition of cultural ecosystem services can broaden environmental decision-making.
Conservation traditionally emphasizes biodiversity, habitat, endangered species, ecological processes, or economically measurable ecosystem services. Cultural-service research adds questions such as:
- Which places have special meaning to communities?
- Which environments support recreation and social interaction?
- Which species are important to cultural identity?
- Which landscapes contain important historical or spiritual values?
- Who currently receives cultural benefits?
- Who may lose them following environmental change?
- Are culturally important places accessible?
- How might restoration affect people's relationships with a landscape?
Cultural ecosystem services can therefore inform protected-area management, urban planning, landscape architecture, ecological restoration, coastal planning, rural development, forest management, tourism policy, and nature-based solutions.
Including cultural values may also increase public acceptance of environmental policies when management decisions reflect the experiences and priorities of people who use and care about the affected landscapes.
Limits and Critiques of the Concept
The concept of cultural ecosystem services remains debated.
One criticism is that describing cultural relationships with nature as "services" can imply that nature produces discrete benefits that people simply consume. Identity, spirituality, heritage, responsibility, kinship, and belonging may instead emerge through relationships between people, communities, cultures, and environments.
Another problem is valuation. Translating cultural relationships into monetary values may help them enter conventional planning processes, but it can also reduce complex meanings to financial measures that fail to represent their significance.
Researchers have therefore increasingly adopted plural approaches to value. Economic measures can be considered alongside cultural, ecological, ethical, relational, spiritual, and community perspectives rather than being treated as the sole measure of importance.
The field has consequently evolved from primarily identifying and classifying cultural services toward understanding relationships, plural values, equity, participation, and decision-making.
Conclusion
Cultural ecosystem services reveal that the importance of nature cannot be understood solely through material resources or ecological functions. People also depend on ecosystems for recreation, inspiration, beauty, education, memory, spirituality, identity, social relationships, heritage, and a sense of belonging.
These benefits arise through relationships between people and places and therefore vary among cultures, communities, individuals, and generations.
Research has progressed from basic classifications toward increasingly sophisticated participatory mapping, spatial analysis, social-media research, citizen science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Yet technological advances do not eliminate the need for direct engagement with the people whose experiences and cultural relationships are being studied.
The central lesson of cultural ecosystem-service research is that environmental conservation is also connected to human culture. Protecting forests, rivers, wetlands, coasts, agricultural landscapes, urban parks, species, and other ecosystems can simultaneously protect memories, traditions, identities, relationships, and opportunities for meaningful experiences.
Recognizing these connections can lead to environmental decisions that account not only for what ecosystems physically provide, but also for what places mean to the people who live with, depend upon, remember, visit, and care for them.
- TOC**
Cultural Ecosystem Services
Foundations, Concepts, and Major Reviews
1. The Generations of Cultural Ecosystem Services Research
Traces successive generations of cultural ecosystem services scholarship and examines how thinking has shifted toward relationships, plural values, equity, and decision-making.
2. Cultural Ecosystem Services and Opportunities for Inclusive and Effective Nature-Based Solutions
| Simona Panaro, Izabela Delabre and Fiona Marshall | Ecological Economics | 2025
Explores how attention to cultural values can make nature-based solutions more socially inclusive and better aligned with the people who live in affected landscapes.
3. Trends in Valuation Approaches for Cultural Ecosystem Services: A Systematic Literature Review
| Laura Andreina Matos Márquez et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2023
Examines how researchers have valued cultural ecosystem services and documents the growing use of nonmonetary, participatory, and spatial approaches.
4. Cultural Ecosystem Services Research Progress and Future Prospects: A Review
| Liangjian Yang and Kaijun Cao | Sustainability | 2022
Reviews the development of cultural ecosystem services research, including major themes, methods, geographic patterns, and directions for future study.
5. A Systematic Review of Cultural Ecosystem Services and Human Wellbeing
| Aleksandra Kosanic and Jan Petzold | Ecosystem Services | 2020
Reviews evidence connecting cultural ecosystem services with human wellbeing and identifies gaps in understanding how different social groups experience these benefits.
6. Evaluation of Cultural Ecosystem Services: A Review of Methods
| Xin Cheng, Sylvie Van Damme, Luyuan Li and Pieter Uyttenhove | Ecosystem Services | 2019
Identifies and compares major methods used to evaluate cultural ecosystem services, ranging from interviews and surveys to economic valuation and spatial analysis.
7. Conceptualising Cultural Ecosystem Services: A Novel Framework for Research and Critical Engagement
| Robert Fish, Andrew Church and Michael Winter | Ecosystem Services | 2016
Proposes a framework that treats cultural benefits as products of relationships between environmental spaces, cultural practices, and human meanings.
8. Why Protect Nature? Rethinking Values and the Environment
| Kai M. A. Chan et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2016
Develops the concept of relational values, emphasizing relationships, responsibilities, identity, and meaningful ways of living with nature beyond purely instrumental values.
9. Cultural Ecosystem Services: A Literature Review and Prospects for Future Research
| Andra Ioana Milcu et al. | Ecology and Society | 2013
Reviews more than one hundred publications and highlights persistent conceptual and methodological difficulties in identifying and assessing cultural ecosystem services.
10. Contributions of Cultural Services to the Ecosystem Services Agenda
| Terry C. Daniel et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2012
Argues that cultural ecosystem services are central to human relationships with ecosystems and require greater integration into ecosystem-service science and policy.
Indicators, Assessment, and Wellbeing
11. Mapping and Assessing Cultural Ecosystem Services to Inform Maritime Spatial Planning: A Systematic Review
| Marina Banela, Stella Sofia Kyvelou and Dimitra Kitsiou | Heritage | 2024
Reviews methods for identifying and mapping marine cultural benefits and considers how they can be incorporated into maritime spatial planning.
12. A Global Systematic Review of the Cultural Ecosystem Services Provided by Wetlands
| Kevin A. Wood et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2024
Synthesizes worldwide evidence showing the importance of wetlands for recreation, identity, heritage, inspiration, education, spirituality, and other cultural benefits.
13. A Review of Empirical Studies of Cultural Ecosystem Services in National Parks: Current Status and Future Research
Reviews research on recreation, aesthetics, heritage, spiritual experience, education, and other cultural benefits generated by national parks.
14. Mapping Indicators of Cultural Ecosystem Services: Review and Relevance to Urban Context
| Asmaa Abualhagag and István Valánszki | Journal of Landscape Ecology | 2020
Reviews spatial indicators for cultural ecosystem services and evaluates their usefulness for mapping benefits within cities.
15. Cultural Ecosystem Services: Characteristics, Challenges and Lessons for Urban Green Space Research
| Dawn C. Dickinson and Richard J. Hobbs | Ecosystem Services | 2017
Reviews the special difficulties of assessing cultural ecosystem services and considers how they can be incorporated into research and management of urban green spaces.
16. Contributing to the Cultural Ecosystem Services and Human Wellbeing Debate: A Case Study Application on Indicators and Linkages
| Peter Waweru Wangai, Benjamin Burkhard, Marion Kruse and Felix Müller | Landscape Online | 2017
Examines indicators linking ecosystems, cultural services, and dimensions of human wellbeing within a case-study landscape.
17. Cultural Ecosystem Services in the UK: Lessons on Designing Indicators to Inform Management and Policy
| J. A. Tratalos et al. | Ecological Indicators | 2016
Examines the construction of indicators capable of representing recreation, aesthetic experience, heritage, and other cultural benefits in UK environmental policy.
18. Indicators of Cultural Ecosystem Services for Urban Planning: A Review
| Daniele La Rosa, Marcin Spyra and Luis Inostroza | Ecological Indicators | 2016
Evaluates cultural-service indicators that can help urban planners incorporate recreation, aesthetics, heritage, identity, and other nonmaterial benefits into planning.
19. Subjective Well-Being Indicators for Large-Scale Assessment of Cultural Ecosystem Services
| Rosalind Bryce et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2016
Explores subjective wellbeing measures as a way of assessing cultural benefits that cannot easily be captured through monetary or biophysical indicators.
20. An Empirical Review of Cultural Ecosystem Service Indicators
| Mónica Hernández-Morcillo, Tobias Plieninger and Claudia Bieling | Ecological Indicators | 2013
Reviews indicators used in empirical cultural ecosystem services research and shows how difficult intangible benefits can be to represent with conventional environmental metrics.
Research Trends, Identity, and Sense of Place
21. A Systematic Literature Review on the Valuation of Mountain Cultural Ecosystem Services
| Bobby Thapa et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2026
Reviews how cultural benefits generated by mountain ecosystems have been identified and valued and highlights gaps in geographic coverage and valuation methods.
22. Digital Windows into Nature’s Values: A Critical Review of Cultural Ecosystem Services Research with Social Media Data
Reviews the rapidly expanding use of geotagged photographs, posts, and other social-media data for measuring cultural ecosystem services.
23. Cultural Ecosystem Services Research Progress and Prospect: A Bibliometric Analysis
Uses bibliometric analysis to examine growth, major themes, influential research, and developing areas within the cultural ecosystem services literature.
24. Knowledge Mapping of Cultural Ecosystem Services Applied on Blue-Green Infrastructure—A Scientometric Review with CiteSpace
| Jinfeng Li et al. | Forests | 2024
Maps research trends connecting cultural ecosystem services with urban blue-green infrastructure and identifies major topics and emerging research directions.
25. The Multilocality of Sense of Place in Ecosystem Services Discourse
| Sakineh Ghorbanzadeh and Kenneth Nordberg | Sustainability Science | 2024
Examines how people can simultaneously develop attachments to multiple places and why this matters for ecosystem-service planning and governance.
26. Importance of Cultural Ecosystem Services for Cultural Identity and Wellbeing in the Lower Engadine, Switzerland
| Aleksandra Kosanic et al. | Land | 2023
Investigates how landscapes contribute to cultural identity and wellbeing among residents of an Alpine region.
27. Influence of Cultural Contexts on the Appreciation of Different Cultural Ecosystem Services Based on Social Network Analysis
| Francisca Kilonzi and Takahiro Ota | One Ecosystem | 2019
Shows that cultural and social contexts influence which ecosystem benefits people recognize and how different cultural services relate to one another.
28. Conceptualizing ‘Sense of Place’ in Cultural Ecosystem Services: A Framework for Interdisciplinary Research
| Frances Ryfield, David Cabana, John Brannigan and Tasman Crowe | Ecosystem Services | 2019
Develops an interdisciplinary framework for incorporating sense of place into cultural ecosystem services research.
29. Aesthetic and Spiritual Values of Ecosystems: Recognising the Ontological and Axiological Plurality of Cultural Ecosystem ‘Services’
| Nigel Cooper, Emily Brady, Helen Steen and Rosalind Bryce | Ecosystem Services | 2016
Explores aesthetic and spiritual relationships with ecosystems while questioning whether all such values can adequately be expressed through the language of services.
30. Cultural Ecosystem Services Provided by Landscapes: Assessment of Heritage Values and Identity
| Anna Tengberg et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2012
Examines landscape heritage, cultural identity, and sense of place and proposes ways to integrate these values into ecosystem-service assessments.
Cultural Heritage and Landscape Values
31. What Makes a Successful Industrial Heritage Park?—China's Experience Based on the Ecosystem Cultural Services Perspective
| Sunny Han, Yujing Li and Peiheng Yu | Urban Resilience and Sustainability | 2024
Uses a cultural ecosystem services perspective to examine how industrial heritage parks can combine heritage conservation, recreation, identity, and urban regeneration.
32. Social Values for Ecosystem Services (SolVES): Open-Source Spatial Modeling of Cultural Services
Presents the open-source SolVES framework for mapping and analyzing social values associated with ecosystems and landscapes.
33. The Potential Role of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Heritage Research Through a Set of Indicators
Develops indicators linking ecosystem-service assessment with cultural heritage research and landscape conservation.
34. What Is Value? Impact Assessment of Cultural Heritage
| Guillermo S. Reher | Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development | 2020
Discusses the difficulty of defining and measuring heritage value and offers perspectives relevant to cultural ecosystem-service assessment.
35. Quantifying Cultural Ecosystem Services: Disentangling the Effects of Management from Landscape Features
| Eleanor R. Tew and Benno I. Simmons | People and Nature | 2019
Investigates how landscape management and physical environmental features separately influence the cultural benefits perceived by people.
36. Towards an Indicator-Based Assessment of Cultural Heritage as a Cultural Ecosystem Service – A Case Study of Scottish Landscapes
| Nils Stanik, Inge Aalders and David Miller | Ecological Indicators | 2018
Tests indicators for identifying and mapping cultural heritage values embedded within Scottish landscapes.
37. Crowdsourcing Indicators for Cultural Ecosystem Services: A Geographically Weighted Approach for Mountain Landscapes
| Patrizia Tenerelli, Urška Demšar and Sandra Luque | Ecological Indicators | 2016
Uses crowdsourced geographic information to identify spatial patterns in recreation and other cultural services across mountain landscapes.
38. Assessing, Mapping, and Quantifying Cultural Ecosystem Services at Community Level
| Tobias Plieninger, S. Dijks, E. Oteros-Rozas and C. Bieling | Land Use Policy | 2013
Demonstrates a participatory approach for identifying and spatially mapping cultural ecosystem services valued by local communities.
39. The Relationship Between Place Attachment and Landscape Values: Toward Mapping Place Attachment
| Gregory Brown and Christopher Raymond | Applied Geography | 2007
Shows how place attachment can be spatially linked with landscape values, providing an important foundation for later cultural ecosystem-service mapping.
40. Mapping Landscape Values and Development Preferences: A Method for Tourism and Residential Development Planning
| Gregory Brown | International Journal of Tourism Research | 2006
Demonstrates participatory mapping of landscape values and development preferences for use in tourism and land-use planning.
Participatory Mapping, Social Media, and Digital Methods
41. Assessing Perception and Equity of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Urban Parks Using Social Media Data
| Yu Zhang, Lin Zhao and Shiyuan Hu | Scientific Reports | 2025
Uses social-media data to examine the distribution, accessibility, demand, and spatial equity of cultural ecosystem services across urban parks.
42. Exploring Estonian Forests and Urban Green Spaces: A Cultural Ecosystem Services Mapping Approach Using Flickr Photographs
| Tahmin Sitab, Oleksandr Karasov and Alexander Kmoch | AGILE: GIScience Series | 2023
Uses Flickr photographs to map where people experience cultural benefits in Estonian forests and urban green spaces.
43. Posting Nature: A Critical Perspective on Analysing Cultural Ecosystem Services on Instagram
| Martin Tscholl and Ulrike Sturm | Journal of Environmental Media | 2022
Examines the opportunities and biases involved in using Instagram content as evidence of people's cultural relationships with nature.
44. Beyond Land Cover: How Integrated Remote Sensing and Social Media Data Analysis Facilitates Assessment of Cultural Ecosystem Services
| Oleksandr Karasov et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2022
Integrates remotely sensed landscape information with social-media observations to improve spatial assessments of cultural ecosystem services.
45. Using Social Media Photos and Computer Vision to Assess Cultural Ecosystem Services and Landscape Features in Urban Parks
| Songyao Huai, Fen Chen, Song Liu, Frank Canters and Tim Van de Voorde | Ecosystem Services | 2022
Uses computer vision to classify geotagged park photographs and connect visitor preferences with landscape features and cultural-service categories.
46. Public Participation GIS Versus Geolocated Social Media Data to Assess Urban Cultural Ecosystem Services: Instances of Complementarity
Compares participatory GIS with social-media data and shows that the methods capture different but complementary dimensions of urban cultural values.
47. Enriching Social Media Data Allows a More Robust Representation of Cultural Ecosystem Services
Shows how adding contextual information to social-media observations can improve estimates of recreation and other cultural ecosystem services.
48. Using Graph Theory and Social Media Data to Assess Cultural Ecosystem Services in Coastal Areas: Method Development and Application
| A. Ruiz-Frau et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2020
Combines social-media information with network analysis to examine patterns of cultural ecosystem-service use in coastal environments.
49. Mapping Urban Park Cultural Ecosystem Services: A Comparison of Twitter and Semi-Structured Interview Methods
| Michelle Johnson, Lindsay Campbell, Erika Svendsen and Heather McMillen | Sustainability | 2019
Compares social-media and interview data and demonstrates how different methods reveal different aspects of cultural benefits supplied by urban parks.
50. A Rapid Indicator of Cultural Ecosystem Service Usage at a Fine Spatial Scale: Content Analysis of Social Media Photographs
| Daniel R. Richards and Daniel A. Friess | Ecological Indicators | 2015
Demonstrates how geotagged social-media photographs can provide a rapid indicator of where and how people use ecosystems for cultural benefits.
Urban Parks, Green Space, and Public Experience
51. The Socio-Cultural Values of Ecosystem Services in Managed, Semi-Managed and Low-Managed Urban Blue Spaces and Their Surroundings
| Anna Wilczyńska et al. | Cities | 2026
Compares socio-cultural values associated with differently managed urban blue spaces in Warsaw and considers implications for city planning.
52. Visitor Perceptions and Motivations as Drivers of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Urban Forests: A Case Study from Helsinki, Finland
Examines how visitor motivations and perceptions shape the cultural benefits experienced in Helsinki's urban forests.
53. How Do Cultural Ecosystem Services Affect Visitor Emotions? Evidence from Social Media Data in Shanghai Urban Parks
| Shuhan Zhou and Yuxiang Liu | Frontiers in Psychology | 2025
Investigates relationships between cultural ecosystem services and the emotions expressed by visitors to Shanghai's urban parks.
54. ‘This Is My Magical Place Here’. Linking Cultural Ecosystem Services and Landscape Elements in Urban Green Spaces
| Marta Derek, Sylwia Kulczyk, Tomasz Grzyb and Edyta Woźniak | Ecosystem Services | 2025
Links people's descriptions of meaningful urban green spaces with the specific landscape elements that generate cultural benefits.
55. Supply–Demand Spatial Patterns of Cultural Services in Urban Green Spaces: A Case Study of Nanjing, China
| Qinghai Zhang et al. | Land | 2025
Maps mismatches between the supply of cultural ecosystem services in urban green space and the demand expressed by city residents.
56. Assessing the Supply–Demand Matching and Spatial Flow of Urban Cultural Ecosystem Services: Based on Geospatial Data and User Interaction Data
| Linru Li, Yu Bai, Xuefeng Yuan and Feiyan Li | Land | 2025
Examines how cultural benefits move between urban green spaces and the populations seeking them using geospatial and user-interaction data.
57. Evaluation of Cultural Ecosystem Services in the Urban Parks of Macau from a Cultural Heritage Perspective
| Kehui Liu, Pohsun Wang and Jing Liu | Applied Sciences | 2025
Uses social-media and spatial data to evaluate cultural ecosystem services in Macau parks with special attention to historical and cultural heritage.
58. Mining Social Media Data to Capture Urban Park Visitors’ Perception of Cultural Ecosystem Services and Landscape Factors
| Yaxin Chen et al. | Forests | 2024
Combines text mining and computer vision to examine how park visitors perceive recreation, aesthetics, spirituality, and different landscape features.
59. Practical Framework for Cultural Ecosystem Service in Urban Landscape Design
| Haniyeh Shahali and Amin Habibi | One Ecosystem | 2023
Proposes a framework for translating cultural ecosystem-service concepts into practical urban landscape design.
60. Research on the Evaluation of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Zhengzhou Urban Parks Based on Public Perceptions
| Lili Song et al. | Sustainability | 2023
Evaluates cultural benefits supplied by urban parks from the perspective of the people who use and experience them.
61. Assessing the Impact of Park Renovations on Cultural Ecosystem Services
| Xin Cheng, Sylvie Van Damme and Pieter Uyttenhove | Land | 2022
Examines whether changes made during park renovation alter the cultural benefits perceived and experienced by park users.
62. Users’ Views on Cultural Ecosystem Services of Urban Parks: An Importance-Performance Analysis of a Case in Beijing, China
| Shijie Gai, Jiaming Fu, Xiao Rong and Linlin Dai | Anthropocene | 2022
Compares which cultural benefits park visitors consider important with how well they believe those services are actually provided.
63. How Do Urban Park Features Affect Cultural Ecosystem Services: Quantified Evidence for Design Practices
Identifies specific park-design and landscape characteristics associated with recreation, aesthetic appreciation, and social interaction.
64. Applying the Evaluation of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Landscape Architecture Design: Challenges and Opportunities
| Xin Cheng, Sylvie Van Damme and Pieter Uyttenhove | Land | 2021
Explores how cultural ecosystem-service assessment can become a practical component of landscape architecture and design decisions.
65. The Capacity of Urban Parks for Providing Regulating and Cultural Ecosystem Services Versus Their Social Perception
| Małgorzata Stępniewska | Land Use Policy | 2021
Finds differences between the ecosystem services parks are capable of supplying and the benefits that park users actually recognize and value.
66. Recreation in the City—A Part of Cultural Ecosystem Services
| Zdenka Rózová, Martina Turanovičová and Simona Stašová | Ekológia (Bratislava) | 2020
Examines recreation as a major cultural ecosystem service and considers the importance of accessible urban environments for leisure.
67. Perceptions of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Urban Parks Based on Social Network Data
| Peichao Dai, Shaoliang Zhang, Zanxu Chen, Yunlong Gong and Huping Hou | Sustainability | 2019
Uses social-network data to identify and map the cultural ecosystem services people associate with urban parks.
Spiritual Values, Sacred Places, and Cultural Landscapes
68. Urban Sacred Forests Support Human Well-Being Through Cultural Ecosystem Services
Studies sacred forests in Kanazawa, Japan, and documents cultural benefits related to spirituality, tradition, recreation, and human wellbeing.
69. Identification and Evaluation of Cultural Ecosystem Service Resources in the Territory of the Local Action Group Lednice–Valtice Area
| Ilona Zourková, Lenka Hromková, Jiří Schneider and Jitka Fialová | Sustainability | 2024
Identifies landscape resources that support cultural ecosystem services in a culturally significant Central European landscape.
70. Spatial Analysis of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Lublin: Perception of Local Residents and Tourists
Compares how local residents and tourists perceive and spatially use cultural ecosystem services within the city of Lublin.
71. Assessing Preferences for Cultural Ecosystem Services in the English Countryside Using Q Methodology
| Marie Hubatova et al. | Land | 2023
Uses Q methodology to identify different perspectives on the cultural benefits people value in the English countryside.
72. Making Intangibles Tangible: Identifying Manifestations of Cultural Ecosystem Services in a Cultural Landscape
| Wei Jiang and Rainer Marggraf | Land | 2021
Develops ways to identify observable manifestations of otherwise intangible cultural benefits within landscapes.
73. Spiritual Enrichment or Ecological Protection?: A Multi-Scale Analysis of Cultural Ecosystem Services at the Mai Pokhari, a Ramsar Site of Nepal
| Sunita Chaudhary, Andrew McGregor, Donna Houston and Nakul Chettri | Ecosystem Services | 2019
Shows how spirituality and sense of place at a sacred wetland can conflict with conservation policies that fail to recognize locally important cultural values.
74. Aesthetic and Spiritual Ecosystem Services Provided by Urban Sacred Sites
| Peter De Lacy and Charlie Shackleton | Sustainability | 2017
Examines gardens and green spaces associated with religious sites and finds important contributions to spiritual experience, relaxation, social interaction, and aesthetic enjoyment.
Agriculture and Rural Landscapes
75. Spatial Distribution of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Rural Landscapes Using PGIS and SolVES
| Yasin Yaman and Seda Örücü | Sustainability | 2025
Combines participatory mapping with the SolVES model to identify cultural-value hotspots across rural landscapes.
76. Understanding Different Cultural Ecosystem Services: An Exploration of Rural Landscape Preferences Based on Geographic and Social Media Data
| Yongjun Li et al. | Journal of Environmental Management | 2022
Combines geographic and social-media information to identify landscape characteristics associated with different cultural benefits in rural areas.
77. Revealing Spatial Patterns of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Four Agricultural Landscapes: A Case Study from Hangzhou, China
| Shan He et al. | International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health | 2022
Maps the distribution of cultural ecosystem services across contrasting agricultural landscapes and examines factors influencing their spatial patterns.
78. Assessing Relations Between Cultural Ecosystem Services, Physical Landscape Features and Accessibility in Central-Eastern Europe: A PPGIS Empirical Study from Hungary
| István Valánszki et al. | Sustainability | 2022
Uses participatory GIS to examine how landscape characteristics and accessibility affect the cultural values people assign to rural places.
79. An Attempt to Identify Cultural Ecosystem Services and Related Land Use Types in Rural Areas Under Urbanization
| Xuehui Sun et al. | Environment & Ecosystem Science | 2021
Investigates which rural land-use types are associated with cultural ecosystem services as landscapes undergo urbanization.
80. Beautiful Agricultural Landscapes Promote Cultural Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity Conservation
Finds links among traditional agricultural landscape features, aesthetic and heritage values, and bird biodiversity in an Italian vineyard landscape.
81. Assessing the Ability of Rural Agrarian Areas to Provide Cultural Ecosystem Services: A Multi Scale Social Indicator Framework
| Sónia Carvalho-Ribeiro et al. | Land Use Policy | 2016
Develops a multiscale framework linking agricultural landscape characteristics with aesthetics, stewardship, diversity, and other cultural values.
Recreation, Tourism, Mountains, and Protected Areas
82. What Drives Cultural Ecosystem Services in Mountain Protected Areas? An AI-Assisted Answer Using Social Media Data
| José Carlos Pérez-Girón et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2026
Uses artificial intelligence and social-media information to identify environmental and human factors associated with cultural-service use in mountain protected areas.
83. The Perception of Cultural Ecosystem Services by Tourists in Brazilian Protected Areas
| Frias Barreto et al. | Ecology and Evolution | 2025
Investigates which cultural ecosystem services tourists perceive in Brazilian protected areas and how visitor characteristics influence those perceptions.
84. Differences in the Experience of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Mountain Protected Areas by Clusters of Visitors
| María R. Felipe-Lucia et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2024
Shows that different groups of mountain visitors experience and value cultural ecosystem services in distinct ways.
85. Cultural Ecosystem Services and Disservices in Protected Areas: Hotspots and Influencing Factors Based on Tourists’ Digital Footprints
| Qiaochun Gan et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2024
Uses tourists' digital footprints to map areas associated with both positive cultural benefits and negative experiences within protected areas.
86. Cultural Ecosystem Services in Mountain Regions: Conceptualising Conflicts Among Users and Limitations of Use
| Uta Schirpke et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2020
Examines conflicts that arise when different recreationists and stakeholders seek incompatible cultural benefits from mountain landscapes.
87. Cultural Ecosystem Services in the Natura 2000 Network: Introducing Proxy Indicators and Conflict Risk in Greece
| Vassiliki Vlami et al. | Land | 2020
Develops proxy indicators for cultural benefits within Greece's Natura 2000 protected-area network and identifies places where human use and conservation may conflict.
88. The Role of Tourism Impacts on Cultural Ecosystem Services
| Ben Taff et al. | Environments | 2019
Examines how tourism can both enhance access to cultural ecosystem services and degrade the environmental and social qualities that produce them.
89. Mapping Recreation and Ecotourism as a Cultural Ecosystem Service: An Application at the Local Level in Southern Chile
Develops a spatial approach for mapping recreation and ecotourism opportunities as cultural ecosystem services at a local scale.
Coastal, Marine, Wetland, and Fisheries Cultural Services
90. Valuing and Mapping Cultural Ecosystem Services in Coastal Areas: An Integrated Approach Applied to Recreational Seascape Tourism in Greece
| Valentini Stamatiadou et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2026
Integrates economic valuation and spatial analysis to examine recreation and tourism benefits generated by Greek coastal and seascape environments.
91. Coastal Cultural Ecosystem Services: A Bridge Between the Natural Ecosystem and Social Ecosystem for Sustainable Development
| Yuqing Zhao, Zenglin Han, Changren Zhang, Yuqiao Wang, Jingqiu Zhong and Mengfan Gao | Land | 2024
Reviews coastal cultural ecosystem services and examines their connections with biodiversity, cultural heritage, community management, wellbeing, and sustainable development.
92. Cultural Ecosystem Services Evaluation in a Coastal City of China Using Social Media Data
| Wei Wang, Chaoyang Wu, Qinhua Fang and Odion Ikhumhen Harrison | Ocean & Coastal Management | 2023
Uses social-media data to evaluate how residents and visitors experience cultural ecosystem services across a rapidly developing Chinese coastal city.
93. Assessing the Impact of Marine Tourism and Protection on Cultural Ecosystem Services Using Integrated Approach: A Case Study of Gili Matra Islands
Investigates interactions among tourism, marine protection, community use, and cultural ecosystem services around Indonesia's Gili Matra Islands.
94. Perceived Socio-Cultural Ecosystem Services Provided by Wild Atlantic Salmon Populations in Four European Countries
Examines cultural meanings and social benefits associated with wild Atlantic salmon populations and compares public perceptions across four European countries.
95. Cultural Ecosystem Services Caught in a ‘Coastal Squeeze’ Between Sea Level Rise and Urban Expansion
Maps cultural ecosystem services threatened simultaneously by sea-level rise and expanding urban development and demonstrates their vulnerability to coastal change.
96. Reconnecting with the Past and Anticipating the Future: A Review of Fisheries-Derived Cultural Ecosystem Services in Pre-Hispanic Peru
| R. López de la Lama, S. de la Puente, J. C. Sueiro and Kai M. A. Chan | People and Nature | 2021
Uses archaeological and historical evidence to examine the long-standing cultural benefits that marine ecosystems and fisheries have provided to Peruvian societies.
97. Cultural Ecosystem Services: The Case of Coastal-Rural Area (Nemunas Delta and Curonian Lagoon, Lithuania)
| Lina Marcinkevičiūtė and Rasa Pranskūnienė | Sustainability | 2020
Examines recreation, cultural identity, heritage, and other benefits generated by a Lithuanian coastal-rural landscape.
98. Mapping and Assessment of Cultural Ecosystem Services of Latvian Coastal Areas
| Anda Ruskule, Andris Klepers and Kristina Veidemane | One Ecosystem | 2018
Maps recreation, aesthetic, heritage, and other cultural benefits along Latvia's coast to support coastal planning and management.
99. Marine and Coastal Cultural Ecosystem Services: Knowledge Gaps and Research Priorities
| João Garcia Rodrigues et al. | One Ecosystem | 2017
Reviews marine and coastal cultural ecosystem-service research and identifies major conceptual, methodological, geographic, and policy gaps.
100. Cultural Bequest Values for Ecosystem Service Flows Among Indigenous Fishers: A Discrete Choice Experiment Validated with Mixed Methods
| Kirsten L. L. Oleson et al. | Ecological Economics | 2015
Finds strong value among Indigenous fishers in Madagascar for conserving marine ecosystems so their cultural and livelihood benefits remain available to future generations.
Emerging Research, AI, and Spatial Assessment
101. Spatially Explicit Supply-Demand Matching of Cultural Ecosystem Services in the Coastal City: A Case Study of Qingdao City
| Fuyu Hu, Yueyue Zhang, Qiang Ren, Wanyu Liu and Ying Cui | Ocean & Coastal Management | 2026
Maps the supply and demand of five cultural ecosystem services in Qingdao and identifies areas where public demand and ecosystem capacity are spatially mismatched.
102. Exploring the Influence of Future Land Use Changes on the Cultural Ecosystem Services in a Fast-Developing Region
| Qiqi Zhao et al. | Land Use Policy | 2026
Models how alternative future land-use scenarios could change cultural ecosystem services and demonstrates that different cultural benefits respond differently to development patterns.
103. Cultural Ecosystem Services and Sense of Place Diagnostic Model for Heritage Cities in the Global South
| Salah A. M. Al-Gamal and István Valánszki | Land | 2026
Develops a diagnostic framework connecting cultural ecosystem services, sense of place, biocultural assets, vulnerability, and heritage-city regeneration.
104. Mapping Cultural Ecosystem Services at Scale: A Phrase-Driven Profiling of China’s National Forest Parks
| Wenjie Liu et al. | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications | 2026
Uses online visitor reviews from hundreds of Chinese national forest parks to classify cultural ecosystem services and reveal large-scale geographic patterns.
105. A Systematic Review of Place-Based Cultural Ecosystem Service Assessments: Categories, Methods, and Research Trends
| Ying Pan, Nik Hazwani Nik Hashim and Hong Ching Goh | Sustainability | 2026
Reviews 163 place-based studies and evaluates which cultural-service categories, assessment methods, and landscape types dominate the literature.
106. A Systematic Review of Cultural Ecosystem Services and Blue Space
| Various authors | Land | 2026
Reviews research connecting rivers, lakes, coasts, wetlands, and other blue spaces with recreation, wellbeing, identity, aesthetics, spirituality, and cultural experience.
107. Integrating Citizen Science and Spatial Machine Learning for Mapping Recreational Cultural Ecosystem Services in Rural Regions
| Milena V. Sokolova et al. | Journal of Environmental Management | 2026
Combines citizen-generated geographic information, machine learning, and economic valuation to map rural recreation services.
108. The Power of Social Media Text: Mapping the Distribution and Drivers of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Taihu Lake Wetland
| Xiaoxia Wu, Yujun Wang, Qiong Liu and Minghao Ou | Ecosystem Services | 2026
Uses multi-platform social-media text to map recreation, aesthetics, heritage, education, inspiration, and psychological benefits around Taihu Lake.
109. Understanding Public Perceptions of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Urban Coastal Wetland Ecological Restoration Areas: A Social Media-Based Large Language Model Approach
| Zirui Zhao et al. | Journal of Environmental Management | 2026
Applies large language models to public comments about restored coastal wetlands and identifies recreation and aesthetics as especially prominent perceived benefits.
110. The Impact of Cultural Ecosystem Service Experiences on Forest Policy Acceptance
Finds that satisfying cultural experiences in forests can increase ecosystem awareness and public acceptance of forest-management policies.
Forests, Green Space, Education, and Social Wellbeing
111. Ecosystem Services and Disservices of Forests and Greenspaces: A Pan-European Representative Study of Societal Perceptions
| Dennis Roitsch et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2026
Uses survey responses across 33 European countries and finds regulating and cultural services among the most highly valued benefits of forests and green spaces.
112. Why Do People Go to Nature? Enhancing the Recognition and Scope of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Landscape
| Jan Daněk et al. | People and Nature | 2026
Explores a broad range of reasons people visit natural landscapes and argues that conventional classifications overlook important emotional and eudaimonic cultural benefits.
113. The Role of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Urban Green Spaces on Social Cohesion of Older People: Using Landscape Design Elements as Indicators
Investigates how specific green-space characteristics can promote interaction, belonging, and social cohesion among older residents.
114. Are Cultural Ecosystem Services Expressed in School Songs Associated with Nature-Related Educational Activities?
| Kazuki Miyauchi and Takeshi Osawa | Nature Conservation | 2026
Finds connections between ecological references in school songs and schools' use of nearby natural areas for environmental education.
115. Cultural Ecosystem Services in Rural Landscapes: A Regional Planning Perspective from Italy
| Monica Pantaloni | Sustainability | 2025
Examines how cultural benefits associated with rural landscapes can be recognized and integrated into regional planning.
116. Spatial Distribution and Influencing Factors of Rural Cultural Ecosystem Services: A Case Study of Fujian, China
| Congzhi Li, Ying Pan, Weilun Yin and Siren Lan | Scientific Reports | 2025
Maps rural cultural ecosystem services and identifies social, environmental, and geographic factors influencing their distribution.
117. Relevance of Community Perceptions in Mapping Cultural Ecosystem Services: Lessons from Bio-Cultural Landscape of Bhitarkanika Wildlife Sanctuary, Odisha
| Rupali Nayal et al. | Ocean & Coastal Management | 2025
Uses participatory GIS to reveal religious, aesthetic, and other cultural values associated with mangroves and coastal landscapes.
118. Revealing Youth-Perceived Cultural Ecosystem Services for High-Density Urban Green Space Management
| Haiyun Xu et al. | Landscape Ecology | 2025
Uses social-media photographs and deep learning to map which cultural benefits young people perceive across central Beijing's green spaces.
119. Identifying Cultural Ecosystem Service Flows and Drivers in Ecological Functional Zone
| Li Li, Rundong Feng, Guoling Hou and Jianchao Xi | Journal of Environmental Management | 2025
Maps movements of people seeking recreation and ecotourism benefits and analyzes the natural and socioeconomic drivers behind those flows.
120. Spatial Correlations Between Cultural Ecosystem Services and Human Activities Along the Shenyang’s Hun River Corridor
| Kaidan Hou and Ling Zhu | Scientific Reports | 2025
Examines where cultural benefits and intensive human activity reinforce one another or come into conflict along an urban river corridor.
National Parks, Protected Areas, and Visitor Experience
121. Cultural Ecosystem Services in China’s National Parks and Their Impact on Public Online Engagement—Analysis of Douyin Short Videos Data Based on BERTopic Modeling
| Juan Lu, Huiying Zhang and Xingnian Zhang | Journal for Nature Conservation | 2025
Uses short-video content to identify ecological, educational, social, and cultural values and examines how those values affect online public engagement.
122. Valuing the Cultural Services of a Forest Protected Area in Southwestern China: The Roles of Online Deliberation and Sample Selection
Tests how public deliberation changes willingness to pay for cultural benefits supplied by Fanjing Mountain National Nature Reserve.
123. A Comprehensive Approach to Identifying the Supply and Demand of Urban Park Cultural Ecosystem Services in the Megalopolis Area of Shanghai, China
| Ying Yang, Li Jiang, Xiaoyan Ma, Song Liu and Lihua Wang | Land | 2025
Develops an integrated method for identifying quantitative and spatial mismatches between cultural-service supply and demand.
124. Mapping and Assessing the Supply and Demand of Rural Recreation Services in National Parks: A Case Study of Qianjiangyuan, Zhejiang, China
| Xiaodong Chen and Chengzhao Wu | Land | 2025
Maps recreation capacity and demand inside a national-park landscape and proposes different management strategies for areas with contrasting conditions.
125. Emotional Landscape Analysis of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Heritage Parks: A Deep Learning Approach Using Social Media Data
| Siyi Ren, Xiaolong Chen and Hongfeng Zhang | Urban Ecosystems | 2025
Analyzes tens of thousands of online comments to connect cultural ecosystem services in heritage parks with visitor emotions.
126. Nature in Urban Green Spaces: Main Attractor or Nice Background? Drivers and Dynamics of Cultural Ecosystem Services Provision
Examines how environmental conditions, seasonality, and visitor activities influence cultural benefits generated by urban parks and forests.
127. Effects of Cultural Landscape Service Features in National Forest Parks on Visitors’ Sentiments: A Nationwide Social Media-Based Analysis in China
| Yingyi Cheng et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2024
Finds that landscape aesthetics, education, recreation, health activities, heritage, and spiritual practices influence visitor sentiment in national forest parks.
128. Rethinking Cultural Ecosystem Services in Urban Forest Parks: An Analysis of Citizens’ Physical Activities Based on Social Media Data
| Hao Zhang, Jiahua Yu, Xinyang Dong, Xiangkun Zhai and Jing Shen | Forests | 2024
Reconsiders cultural services through the physical activities people undertake in urban forest parks.
129. Applying Deep Learning on Social Media to Investigate Cultural Ecosystem Services in Protected Areas Worldwide
| Timothy Bing Lun Yee and L. Roman Carrasco | Scientific Reports | 2024
Analyzes more than 87,000 photographs from thousands of protected areas worldwide to identify global patterns of cultural interactions with nature.
130. Cultural Ecosystem Services Nexus with Socio-Cultural Attributes and Traditional Ecological Knowledge for Managing Community Forests of Indian Western Himalaya
| Honey Bhatt, Harshit Pant Jugran and Rajiv Pandey | Ecological Indicators | 2024
Shows how traditional ecological knowledge and household characteristics shape cultural values associated with Himalayan community forests.
Coasts, Rural Areas, Mountains, and Water
131. Factors Affecting the Use of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Lithuanian Coastal Area
Examines recreation preferences, motivations, and demographic influences on the use of cultural ecosystem services along Lithuania's coast.
132. Mapping Cultural Ecosystem Services: A Case Study in Lesvos Island, Greece
| Marina Banela and Dimitra Kitsiou | Ocean & Coastal Management | 2023
Develops a composite indicator integrating social, ecological, and management information to map cultural services in coastal and marine areas.
133. Cultural Ecosystem Services: A Review of Methods and Tools for Economic Evaluation
| Giuliano Rocco Romanazzi et al. | Environmental and Sustainability Indicators | 2023
Reviews dozens of studies and identifies fifteen major approaches used to evaluate cultural ecosystem services.
134. Challenges to Understanding and Managing Cultural Ecosystem Services in the Global South
| Pamela McElwee, Jun He and Minna Hsu | Ecology and Society | 2022
Examines conceptual and practical challenges that arise when cultural ecosystem-service frameworks are applied across diverse Global South societies.
135. The Influence of Landscape Context on the Production of Cultural Ecosystem Services
| Kim C. Zoeller, Georgina G. Gurney and Graeme S. Cumming | Landscape Ecology | 2022
Demonstrates that cultural ecosystem-service production depends not only on individual sites but also on their broader landscape and social context.
136. Evaluating Supply and Demand of Cultural Ecosystem Services in the Tibetan Plateau
| Jinxi Zhang et al. | Landscape Ecology | 2022
Assesses geographic variation between cultural ecosystem-service opportunities and human demand across the Tibetan Plateau.
137. Can We Model Cultural Ecosystem Services, and Are We Measuring the Right Things?
| Laurence Jones et al. | People and Nature | 2022
Argues that cultural, social, and human capital can help explain why people interact with nature and improve modeling of cultural ecosystem services.
138. Aligning Indigenous Values and Cultural Ecosystem Services for Ecosystem Accounting: A Review
| Anna Normyle, Michael Vardon and Bruce Doran | Ecosystem Services | 2022
Examines how Indigenous values can be better represented in ecosystem-service accounting rather than being forced into conventional economic categories.
139. Not Too Small to Benefit Society: Perceived Cultural Ecosystem Services of Mountain Lakes in the European Alps
| Uta Schirpke, Rocco Scolozzi and Ulrike Tappeiner | Ecology and Society | 2022
Shows that even small Alpine lakes provide important recreation, aesthetic, symbolic, and place-based benefits.
140. Traditional Water Bodies and Cultural Ecosystem Services: Evidence from Rural West Bengal
| K. Chowdhury and B. Behera | World Development Perspectives | 2021
Examines how traditional ponds and other community water bodies support social, religious, recreational, and cultural life in rural India.
Indigenous, Local, and Place-Based Cultural Values
141. Urban Green Space in India: Perception of Cultural Ecosystem Services and Situatedness and Connectedness with Place
| S. Sen and S. K. Guchhait | Ecological Indicators | 2021
Investigates how urban residents' connections with place affect perceptions of the cultural benefits supplied by green spaces.
142. Place Attachment and Land-Use Change: Cultural Ecosystem Service Impacts of Eucalyptus Plantation Expansion in Argentina
| Theresa Selfa, Victoria Marini and Jesse Abrams | Ecology and Society | 2021
Shows how plantation expansion can alter culturally meaningful landscapes and affect local place attachment.
143. Residents’ Perceptions of Urban Green Spaces to Provide Cultural Ecosystem Services in Dhaka, Bangladesh
| Rumana Sultana and Samiya Ahmed Selim | Ecology and Society | 2021
Explores how residents of a rapidly growing megacity perceive recreation, aesthetic, social, and other cultural benefits of urban green areas.
144. Culture and Parks: Incorporating Cultural Ecosystem Services into Conservation in Tibetan Southwest China
| Jun He and Na Guo | Ecology and Society | 2021
Examines tensions between formal protected-area management and local cultural practices in Tibetan landscapes.
145. Conservation and Indigenous Cultures: Cultural Ecosystem Services Among the Yanadi in the Eastern Ghats of India
| Diya Paul and Suresh Jones | Ecology and Society | 2021
Explores how Indigenous relationships with forests complicate conservation approaches that separate ecological protection from cultural life.
146. Ecosystem Services Research in Action: Reflexively Valuing Environments in the South Pacific
| C. E. Hunter and M. Lauer | Ecology and Society | 2021
Examines the ethical and methodological challenges of assessing ecosystem values where local understandings of nature differ from Western service classifications.
147. Rethinking Non-Material Links Between People and Drylands from a Cultural Ecosystem Services Perspective
| Y. Dou, X. Yu and Y. Liu | Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability | 2021
Reviews identity, spirituality, knowledge, recreation, and other nonmaterial relationships between people and dryland environments.
148. Beyond Services: A Process and Framework to Incorporate Cultural, Genealogical, Place-Based, and Indigenous Relationships in Ecosystem Service Assessments
| Pua‘ala Pascua et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2017
Uses a Hawaiʻi-based Indigenous framework to show why genealogy, responsibility, kinship, and place cannot always be represented adequately as ecosystem commodities.
149. Key Māori Values Strengthen the Mapping of Forest Ecosystem Services
| P. O. Lyver et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2017
Demonstrates how Māori knowledge and values can broaden forest ecosystem-service assessment beyond conventional biophysical and economic measures.
150. Mapping Cultural Ecosystem Services with Rainforest Aboriginal Peoples: Integrating Biocultural Diversity into Natural Resource Management
| P. L. Pert et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2015
Works with Aboriginal communities in Australia to spatially represent culturally important places and strengthen their inclusion in natural-resource management.
Theory, Relational Values, and Critiques
151. Abandoning the Concept of Cultural Ecosystem Services, or Against Natural-Scientific Imperialism
| Thomas Kirchhoff | BioScience | 2019
Argues that cultural relationships with landscapes may be distorted when treated as ecosystem outputs analogous to food, timber, or water purification.
152. Integrating Deliberative Monetary Valuation, Systems Modelling and Participatory Mapping to Assess Shared Values of Ecosystem Services
| Jasper O. Kenter | Ecosystem Services | 2016
Demonstrates how deliberation, mapping, and economic valuation can be combined to represent shared and cultural values more effectively.
153. The Impact of Information, Value-Deliberation and Group-Based Decision-Making on Values for Ecosystem Services
| Jasper O. Kenter et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2016
Shows that ecosystem-service values can change through learning and collective deliberation rather than simply reflecting fixed individual preferences.
154. The Possibilities of Arts-Led Dialogue to Elicit Shared, Plural and Cultural Values of Ecosystems
| David M. Edwards, Timothy M. Collins and Reina Goto | Ecosystem Services | 2016
Explores art-based approaches for revealing emotional, cultural, symbolic, and shared environmental values that conventional surveys may overlook.
155. Integrating Socio-Cultural Perspectives into Ecosystem Service Valuation: A Review of Concepts and Methods
Reviews approaches for incorporating social perceptions, shared meanings, and cultural values into ecosystem-service valuation.
156. A Protocol for Eliciting Nonmaterial Values Through a Cultural Ecosystem Services Frame
| Rachelle K. Gould et al. | Conservation Biology | 2015
Presents a structured approach for documenting intangible relationships between people and ecosystems through interviews and qualitative analysis.
157. The Culturality of Ecosystem Services: Emphasizing Process and Transformation
| Michael Pröpper and Felix Haupts | Ecological Economics | 2014
Argues that culture is not simply another category of ecosystem service but shapes the entire process through which people interpret and value ecosystems.
158. The Strange Case of Cultural Services: Limits of the Ecosystem Services Paradigm
| Robert H. Winthrop | Ecological Economics | 2014
Critiques attempts to fit identity, spirituality, heritage, and meaning into a framework originally developed around utilitarian benefits.
159. Comparing Instrumental and Deliberative Paradigms Underpinning the Assessment of Social Values for Cultural Ecosystem Services
| Christopher M. Raymond et al. | Ecological Economics | 2014
Contrasts methods that measure predetermined preferences with deliberative approaches in which values can emerge through discussion.
160. Rethinking Ecosystem Services to Better Address and Navigate Cultural Values
| Kai M. A. Chan, Terre Satterfield and Joshua Goldstein | Ecological Economics | 2012
Argues that cultural values are often inseparable from relationships, identities, and ethical commitments and require approaches beyond standard economic valuation.
Valuation, Decision-Making, and Human Wellbeing
161. Using Dialogue to Contextualize Culture, Ecosystem Services, and Cultural Ecosystem Services
| Kathryn E. Allen, Rebecca L. Castellano and Stephen Pessagno | Ecology and Society | 2021
Uses stakeholder dialogue to examine how local understandings of culture and nature differ from formal ecosystem-service terminology.
162. Mapping the Provision of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Large Cities: The Case of the Andean Piedmont in Santiago, Chile
Maps recreation, aesthetics, identity, and other cultural benefits supplied by natural landscapes bordering metropolitan Santiago.
163. Cultural Ecosystem Services and Decision-Making: How Researchers Describe the Applications of Their Work
| Rachelle K. Gould, Joshua W. Morse and Alison B. Adams | People and Nature | 2019
Examines whether and how cultural ecosystem-service studies actually influence conservation, planning, and environmental decisions.
164. An Exploration of the Relationships Between Cultural Ecosystem Services, Socio-Cultural Values and Well-Being
| Craig Bullock, Deirdre Joyce and Marcus Collier | Ecosystem Services | 2018
Investigates how environmental experiences generate cultural values and how those values contribute to different dimensions of wellbeing.
165. Expanding the Suite of Cultural Ecosystem Services to Include Ingenuity, Perspective, and Life Teaching
| Rachelle K. Gould and Noa Kekuewa Lincoln | Ecosystem Services | 2017
Argues that interactions with ecosystems can foster creativity, perspective, practical knowledge, and important lessons about how to live.
166. Testing Socio-Cultural Valuation Methods of Ecosystem Services to Explain Land-Use Preferences
| Katja Schmidt et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2017
Tests whether social valuation approaches can explain differences in people's preferences for alternative landscape and land-use conditions.
167. Current Role of Social Benefits in Ecosystem Service Assessments
| Katja Schmidt, Ralf Sachse and Ulrich Walz | Landscape and Urban Planning | 2016
Reviews more than one hundred valuation studies and finds that direct stakeholder involvement increases recognition of social benefits.
168. “The Heartbeat of Our People”: Identifying and Measuring How Salmon Influences Quinault Tribal Well-Being
| Sophie Amberson et al. | Society & Natural Resources | 2016
Documents the profound connections between salmon, identity, community, spirituality, subsistence, and wellbeing among the Quinault Indian Nation.
169. Using Cultural Ecosystem Services to Inform Restoration Priorities in the Laurentian Great Lakes
| J. David Allan et al. | Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment | 2015
Demonstrates how recreation and other cultural benefits can be incorporated into ecological restoration prioritization around the Great Lakes.
170. Social Capital as an Ecosystem Service: Evidence from a Locally Managed Marine Area
| Michele Barnes-Mauthe et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2015
Shows how community-based marine management can generate trust, cooperation, relationships, and other forms of social capital alongside ecological benefits.
Landscapes, Communities, and Cultural Meaning
171. Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Landscapes and Cultural Ecosystem Services in the Genheyuan Region of Northeast China
| Yue Dou et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2020
Compares how people from different cultural backgrounds perceive and value landscapes and the benefits they provide.
172. Does Ecosystem Services Valuation Reflect Local Cultural Valuations? Comparative Analysis of Four Urban River Ecosystems
| Elizabeth A. du Bray et al. | Economic Anthropology | 2019
Questions whether standardized ecosystem-service valuation accurately represents how communities themselves understand and value urban rivers.
173. Assessing the Importance of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Urban Areas of Beijing Municipality
| Yue Dou et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2017
Examines residents' perceptions of recreation, aesthetics, heritage, education, and other cultural ecosystem services across metropolitan Beijing.
174. Neglected Ecosystem Services: Highlighting the Socio-Cultural Perception of Mangroves in Decision-Making Processes
| L. Queiroz et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2017
Shows that local communities perceive important cultural values in mangrove ecosystems that may be overlooked by conventional management assessments.
175. Recreational Cultural Ecosystem Services: How Do People Describe the Value?
| Sanna Stålhammar and Eja Pedersen | Ecosystem Services | 2017
Examines how people describe the meaning of outdoor recreation and finds that its value extends beyond the activity itself to relationships, identity, and experience.
176. The Educational Values and Services of Ecosystems and Landscapes—An Overview
| Eva Mocior and Martin Kruse | Ecological Indicators | 2016
Reviews ways that ecosystems and landscapes support formal education, environmental learning, scientific understanding, and informal knowledge.
177. More Than Wine: Cultural Ecosystem Services in Vineyard Landscapes in England and California
| Kathryn J. Winkler and Kimberly A. Nicholas | Ecological Economics | 2016
Examines how vineyards provide heritage, scenic beauty, identity, tourism, recreation, and other cultural benefits in addition to agricultural production.
178. Quantifying and Mapping Ecosystem Service Use Across Stakeholder Groups
| Rachel Darvill and Zoë Lindo | Ecosystem Services | 2015
Demonstrates how different groups use and value the same landscapes differently and why management should recognize this social diversity.
179. A Social Contract with the Ancestors—Culture and Ecosystem Services in Southern Madagascar
| Jacob von Heland and Carl Folke | Global Environmental Change | 2014
Shows how ancestral responsibilities, sacred practices, and ecological stewardship form an interconnected social-ecological system.
180. Culture, Nature, and the Valuation of Ecosystem Services in Northern Namibia
| Michael Schnegg et al. | Ecology and Society | 2014
Demonstrates that cultural background strongly influences which ecosystem services people recognize and how they assign value to landscapes.
Agricultural, Forest, and Historical Landscapes
181. Evaluation of a Structure Providing Cultural Ecosystem Services in Forest Recreation Using Quantitative Text Analysis
| Various authors | Forests | 2021
Uses text analysis to investigate how forest recreation infrastructure contributes to cultural experiences and visitor perceptions.
182. Cultural Ecosystem Services from the Afforestation of Rice Terraces and Farmland: Emerging Services as an Alternative to Monoculturalization
| Ryo Kohsaka, Koji Ito, Yoshitaka Miyake and Yuta Uchiyama | Forest Ecology and Management | 2021
Shows that afforestation of former rice terraces can create new cultural, educational, tourism, biodiversity, and traditional-production benefits.
183. Assessing and Mapping Cultural Ecosystem Services of an Urban Forest Based on Narratives from Blog Posts
| Jeeyoung Kim and Yonghoon Son | Ecological Indicators | 2021
Uses online narratives to map recreation, sense of place, aesthetics, and other cultural values associated with Bukhansan in Korea.
184. Assessing and Quantifying Offered Cultural Ecosystem Services of German River Landscapes
Develops spatial indicators for recreation, aesthetics, and heritage to compare cultural-service opportunities across German river landscapes.
185. Cultural Ecosystem Services Provided by Rivers Across Diverse Social-Ecological Landscapes: A Social Media Analysis
| Rebecca Hale, Elizabeth M. Cook and Bray J. Beltrán | Ecological Indicators | 2019
Uses Flickr data to examine how river-related cultural ecosystem services vary with ecological, social, and built landscape characteristics.
186. Spatial Patterns of Cultural Ecosystem Services Provision in Southern Patagonia
| Guillermo Martínez Pastur et al. | Landscape Ecology | 2016
Maps cultural-service hotspots across Patagonia and identifies water, wildlife, accessibility, protected areas, and tourism as important drivers.
187. Seeing the Forest for Its Multiple Ecosystem Services: Indicators for Cultural Services in Heterogeneous Forests
| Ira James Sutherland, Sarah Elizabeth Gergel and Elena M. Bennett | Ecological Indicators | 2016
Develops indicators linking forest structures, including culturally important large trees, with cultural ecosystem-service provision.
188. Assessment and Illustration of Cultural Ecosystem Services at the Local Scale—A Retrospective Trend Analysis
| Linda Szücs, Ulrike Anders and Renate Bürger-Arndt | Ecological Indicators | 2015
Uses historical land-use change to reconstruct how cultural ecosystem services changed over time in a German landscape.
189. Valuing Cultural Ecosystem Services: Agricultural Heritage in Chiloé Island, Southern Chile
| José Barrena et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2014
Examines agricultural heritage as a cultural ecosystem service rooted in traditional crops, knowledge, practices, and social relationships.
190. The Neglected Stepchildren of Forest-Based Ecosystem Services: Cultural, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Values
| Robert H. Winthrop | Forest Policy and Economics | 2013
Argues that deeply personal, spiritual, symbolic, and cultural attachments to forests and trees are frequently undervalued in policy decisions.
Rivers, Lakes, Wetlands, Fisheries, and Applied Management
191. Investigation of Cultural Ecosystem Services Supply in the Lower Rhine Using Social Media Images
| Various authors | One Ecosystem | 2023
Uses geotagged photographs to identify where recreation, aesthetics, and other cultural benefits are generated along the Lower Rhine.
192. Mapping the Intangibles: Defining and Assessing Cultural Ecosystem Services in the Lake Macquarie Estuary
| Various authors | Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science | 2020
Maps intangible social and cultural values associated with an Australian estuary and demonstrates their relevance to coastal planning.
193. The Importance of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Natural Resource-Dependent Communities: Implications for Management
| Tammy L. Elwell, David López-Carr, Stefan Gelcich and Steven D. Gaines | Ecosystem Services | 2020
Finds that communities dependent on natural resources still place substantial importance on scenic beauty, recreation, and other cultural benefits.
194. Cultural Ecosystem Services and the Well-Being of Refugee Communities
| Tatiana M. Gladkikh, Rachelle K. Gould and Kimberly J. Coleman | Ecosystem Services | 2019
Reviews evidence that gardens, agricultural areas, parks, and other ecosystems can support refugee mental health, social relationships, identity, and cultural continuity.
195. Cultural Ecosystem Services Provided by the Baltic Sea Marine Environment
| Heini Ahtiainen et al. | Ambio | 2019
Examines recreation, aesthetics, cultural heritage, inspiration, and other nonmaterial benefits that people derive from the Baltic Sea and considers their importance for marine management.
196. Making Space for Cultural Ecosystem Services: Insights from a Study of the UK Nature Improvement Initiative
| Robert Fish et al. | Ecosystem Services | 2016
Examines how cultural values can be incorporated into landscape-scale conservation and environmental improvement programs.
197. Assessment of Provisioning and Cultural Ecosystem Services in Natural Wetlands and Rice Fields in Kano Floodplain, Kenya
| Risper Ajwang’ Ondiek, Nzula Kitaka and Steve Omondi Oduor | Ecosystem Services | 2016
Compares natural wetlands and rice fields in Kenya in terms of religious, recreational, educational, ecotourism, and provisioning benefits.
198. A Multi-Indicator Framework for Mapping Cultural Ecosystem Services: The Case of Freshwater Recreational Fishing
| Amy M. Villamagna, Beatriz Mogollon and Paul L. Angermeier | Ecological Indicators | 2014
Maps both ecological capacity and public demand for freshwater recreational fishing to identify locations where cultural-service use may be unsustainable.
199. A Mapping Approach to Assess Intangible Cultural Ecosystem Services: The Case of Agriculture Heritage in Southern Chile
Develops a GIS approach to map agricultural heritage based on culturally significant species, traditional knowledge, and social relationships.
200. Managing Cultural Ecosystem Services
Shows that cultural ecosystem services are important management priorities despite persistent difficulties in measuring and monitoring intangible benefits.
