Ecosystem services justice : the emergence of a critical research field

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-MEcosystem services justice is an emergent research field. Over the past decade, research on ecosystem services has increasingly developed a justice perspective and incorporated it into its conceptual and empirical frameworks. This perspective aims at providing a review of the emergent strands of research addressing ecosystem services justice, and at creating an outlook on future research needs and frontiers. The review departs from central critiques to the ecosystem service approach, which have been foundational for the research field of ecosystem services justice. To be precise, we address three different research strands on which justice issues arise. First, ecosystem services production, considering the (increasing) commodification of ecosystem services, the concentration of ecosystem services production assets and the role of trade-offs in production capacities. Second, the distribution of ecosystem services benefits under the aspects of unequal vulnerabilities, the consideration of accessibility and individual's capabilities to obtain ecosystem services. Third, the recognition of ecosystem services pluralisms, including socially differentiated forms of wellbeing, plural values and knowledge concerning ecosystem services. While ES justice has strongly advanced from a scientific perspective, we are still lacking a stronger reflection of these advances in practice. Future research, we argue, needs to develop holistic procedural frameworks for integrating the complexity of ecosystem services justice, addressing the ecosystem services production under consideration of historic inequalities, the distribution of ecosystem services benefits with respect to people's diverse needs, vulnerabilities, and capabilities, as well as diverse wellbeing-, value-, and knowledge-systems. The social-ecological understanding of ecosystem services co-production, which recognizes the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between humans and ecosystems, is identified as a crucial framing for this endeavor

Into the Urban Wild: Overcoming Barriers to Urban Rewilding through Expert Perspectives on Benefits, Hurdles, and Measures for Creating Wilder Greenspaces

Urban rewilding, which promotes the development and transformation of urban greenspaces (UGS) into wilder forms, has garnered public support and offers numerous benefits – from enhancing human well-being and providing wildlife habitats to bolstering urban resilience against climate change. However, many UGS remain highly manicured. Research suggests that public expectations, safety concerns, conflicts with heritage preservation goals, and perceived disservices (e.g., allergenic pollen or unwanted wildlife) are among the barriers to adopting wilder designs; however, it remains unclear which factors hinder UGS rewilding the most. To investigate this, the study conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 experts involved in UGS management, including members of administrative bodies and conservation NGOs in Germany, to identify perceived benefits, challenges, and recommended measures for implementing wilder UGS. The interviews revealed that both groups viewed urban parks as focal points for rewilding, listing wildlife habitats, the human–nature connection, and aesthetic value as key benefits. However, a persisting demand for orderliness and conflicts with the recreational functionality of UGS emerged as predominant hurdles across all interviews. Conservation experts additionally highlighted challenges such as financial constraints, limited personnel, and rigid bureaucratic processes, while administrative experts emphasized safety, heritage preservation, and the risk of attracting unwanted wildlife. Regarding rewilding measures, both groups advocated for ecological interventions like creating wildflower meadows and allowing natural growth. Conservationists additionally recommended social measures to foster public acceptance, including educational signage, lighthouse projects, and features like early-blooming plants or designated mowing strips. To further advance urban rewilding, this study recommends that administrations and conservationists (1) create room for exchange to combat hurdles together, (2) target diverse UGS, including informal areas and cemeteries, (3) emphasize the climate resilience of wilder UGS, (4) address biases toward orderliness through social measures, and (5) reassess budgetary frameworks to enable broader rewilding. Finally, future studies should explore how to integrate rewilding efforts with recreational, cultural heritage, and safety objectives

Proposed nomenclature for Pseudallescheria, Scedosporium and related genera

As a result of fundamental changes in the International Code of Nomenclature on the use of separate names for sexual and asexual stages of fungi, generic names of many groups should be reconsidered. Members of the ECMM/ISHAM working group on Pseudallescheria/Scedosporium infections herein advocate a novel nomenclature for genera and species in Pseudallescheria, Scedosporium and allied taxa. The generic names Parascedosporium, Lomentospora, Petriella, Petriellopsis, and Scedosporium are proposed for a lineage within Microascaceae with mostly Scedosporium anamorphs producing slimy, annellidic conidia. Considering that Scedosporium has priority over Pseudallescheria and that Scedosporium prolificans is phylogenetically distinct from the other Scedosporium species, some name changes are proposed. Pseudallescheria minutispora and Petriellidium desertorum are renamed as Scedosporium minutisporum and S. desertorum, respectively. Scedosporium prolificans is renamed as Lomentospora prolificans

Stakeholder perspectives on ecosystem service supply and ecosystem service demand bundles

Recent developments in Ecosystem Service (ES) research show a growing interest in the concept of ES bundles for informing the effective management of landscapes. While the supply of ES bundles was biophysically assessed, there has been little research about the perception of ES bundles, neither in terms of their supply, nor of their demand. This research investigates how various stakeholders perceive the delivery of ES supply bundles across different landscapes and how this differs from the ES demand bundles they request. A questionnaire survey (n = 858) was carried out on the basis of landscape photographs with local farmers, local inhabitants, and visitors in the region of South Tyrol in the Central Alps. The results show that the different stakeholder groups identify identical ES supply bundles (i.e. experiential service, life maintenance service, agroservice bundle) and associate each with a similar set of landscape types. Stakeholders, however, differ in terms of their expressed demand for ES bundles. These findings suggest that stakeholders experience different (spatial) mismatches between the supply and demand of ES, potentially leading to stakeholder conflicts in landscape management. This study concludes by discussing these potential conflicts across different landscapes and in the context of future land use and management decisions

A bird’s eye view over ecosystem services in Natura 2000 sites across Europe

Recent ‘New Conservation’ approaches called for more ecosystem services (ES) emphasis in conservation. We analysed data from 3757 Natura 2000 special protection areas (SPAs) and translated positive and negative impacts listed by conservation managers into indicators of the use of nine provisioning, regulating and cultural ES. Overall, the use of ES is considered by SPA managers to affect conservation goals more negatively than positively. ES associated with livestock keeping and fodder production are recorded as having the highest fraction of positive impacts on SPAs, ranging from 88% and 78% in the Boreal biogeographic region to 20% and 6% in the Mediterranean. The use of ES varied according to dominant habitat class, highlighting the dependence of specific ES on associated ecosystem functions. For instance, fibre production was the predominant ES throughout forest habitats while crop, fodder and livestock exhibit similar patterns of dominance across agricultural landscapes. In contrast, the use of wild food and recreation activities are seen as causing mainly negative effects across all habitats. Our analysis suggests that most uses of ES result in negative effects on conservation goals. These outcomes should be considered when implementing future conservation strategies

Using geographically weighted models to explore how crowdsourced landscape perceptions relate to landscape physical characteristics

This study explores how formal measures of landscape wildness (i.e. absence of human artefacts, perceived naturalness of land cover, remoteness from mechanised access, and ruggedness of the terrain) correlate with crowdsourced measures of landscape aesthetic quality as captured in Scenic-Or-Not data for Great Britain. It evaluates multiple linear regression (MLR) and two spatially varying coefficients models: geographically weighted regression (GWR) and multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR). The MLR provided a baseline model in an analysis of national data, exhibiting the presence of spatially autocorrelated residuals and suggesting that geographically weighted models may be appropriate. A standard GWR was found to exacerbate local collinearity between covariates, both overfitting and underfitting the model with highly varied and localised results. This was due to its single one-size-fits-all bandwidth and the assumption that all relationships between the target and predictor variables operate over the same spatial scale. MGWR relaxes this assumption by determining parameter-specific bandwidths, mitigating the local collinearity issues found in a standard GWR and resulting in more spatially stable and consistent coefficient estimates. The findings also indicated that the relationship between some covariates (such as remoteness) and perceived landscape quality varied little spatially, while clear gradients were found for other covariates. For example, naturalness was stronger in the north and west, ruggedness was stronger in the south and east, and the absence of human artefacts was weaker in Scotland and the north than in England and the south. Overall, the study showed that MGWR is more sensitive than GWR to the spatial heterogeneity in the statistical relationships between landscape factors and public perceptions. These findings provide nuanced understandings of how these relationships vary spatially, underscoring the value of such approaches in landscape scale analyses to support policy and planning. The discussion section of this paper considers the MGWR as the default geographically weighted model, assessing the potential for the use of crowdsourced data in landscape studies. In so doing, it illustrates how such approaches could be used to explore both subjective and objective landscape evaluations