Socio-cultural values and biophysical supply: How do afforestation and land abandonment impact multiple ecosystem services?

Humans have significantly modified the planet’s ecosystems with negative consequences for biodiversity and human wellbeing. However, not all land use is equal, and many traditional land uses, and emergent cultural landscapes support important biodiversity and provide multiple benefits to society. Despite their importance, cultural landscapes are threatened by several factors, the most prominent being abandonment of the traditional practices that maintain them. Afforestation schemes to mitigate atmospheric carbon are an additional emerging threat. Abandonment and afforestation threaten both ecological processes and socio-cultural values, but surprisingly, there is little knowledge on the concurrent social and ecological impacts. We used a multi-method approach of ecological field surveys to quantify the biophysical supply and socio-cultural values of ecosystem services (ES) in four different vegetation types representing managed open vegetation, natural forest types for abandonment and planted forests to represent afforestation. We explored the match and/or mismatch between socio-cultural values and biophysical supply of ES in those vegetation types and investigated the socio-demographic factors that influence socio-cultural values for ES. Biophysical supply of ES was variable across vegetation types and synergies were as common as trade-offs. Socio-cultural values were high for most ES in open vegetation and natural forests and low for planted forests. Biophysical supply and socio-cultural values were well matched across the vegetation types for biodiversity and agricultural products, but strongly mismatched for climate regulation. We show that although trade-offs occur both within value- and between value domains, synergies are also common. Our results show that abandonment would impact on the biophysical supply and socio-cultural values of some ES but that this impact would be lower than that of afforestation. We argue that our approach can be used to manage trade-offs and enhance synergies between value domains for a holistic approach to landscape stewardship that supports both people and nature.