Ranking ecosystem services delivered by trees in urban and rural areas
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Date
2022-03
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Publisher
Springer
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Abstract
Policies and strategies for tree management and protection on a national, regional, and local level have not sufficiently considered differences between rural and urban areas. We used expert knowledge to compare rural and urban areas in a case study evaluating the relative importance of ecosystem services (ES) in policy development. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and focus group discussions were used to rank 17 ES, representing four classes of services: provisioning, regulating, habitat, and cultural. The results indicated that effective protection strategies, beyond simply increasing general tree cover, should consider specific benefits trees provide to local communities. We discuss the role of objective prioritization of ES delivered by trees in urban and rural areas and their consequences for decision-making processes.
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Sponsor
This research was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, under Grant Number 2017/25/B/HS6/00954; and the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) (scholarship START edition 2020).
Keywords
Analytic hierarchy process, Ecosystem services, Environmental management, Expert knowledge, Tree protection
Citation
Ambio, 2022, Vol. 51