TY - JOUR

T1 - Assessing Relations between Cultural Ecosystem Services, Physical Landscape Features and Accessibility in Central-Eastern Europe

T2 - A PPGIS Empirical Study from Hungary

AU - Valánszki, István

AU - Kristensen, Lone Søderkvist

AU - Jombach, Sándor

AU - Ladányi, Márta

AU - Kovács, Krisztina Filepné

AU - Fekete, Albert

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

PY - 2022/1/1

Y1 - 2022/1/1

N2 - Despite the growing quantity of ecosystem-services-related research, there is still a lack of deeper understanding on cultural ecosystem services (CES). This is mainly due to the perception of CES, which can vary by geographic location and population. In this study, we present a Public Participation Geographic Information System (PPGIS) method in a Hungarian microregion. Our goal is to increase understanding on how cultural services are perceived in this geographical context and level, and how this relative importance is related to biophysical landscape features. We also consider the influence of accessibility on the perceived landscape and compare our findings with the results of other studies with different sociocultural backgrounds. The research consists of participatory mapping with 184 persons that were digitized and analyzed with GIS and statistical software. During the analysis, we identified CES hotspots and compared CES with landscape features, as well as CES perception with accessibility. Our results showed positive correlation of CES with land covers related to built-up areas, as well as aesthetic and recreational services with water bodies. Compared to other studies, we found different spatial relationships in the case of spiritual services, and higher importance of agricultural land covers during the CES perception, thanks to the Central-Eastern European (CEE) sociocultural background. Our study highlights the effect of accessibility on CES perception; nevertheless, these relationships varied by different infrastructural elements. We conclude by discussing the implications and limitations of our study and encouraging future landscape research to apply the PPGIS method in this geographical context.

AB - Despite the growing quantity of ecosystem-services-related research, there is still a lack of deeper understanding on cultural ecosystem services (CES). This is mainly due to the perception of CES, which can vary by geographic location and population. In this study, we present a Public Participation Geographic Information System (PPGIS) method in a Hungarian microregion. Our goal is to increase understanding on how cultural services are perceived in this geographical context and level, and how this relative importance is related to biophysical landscape features. We also consider the influence of accessibility on the perceived landscape and compare our findings with the results of other studies with different sociocultural backgrounds. The research consists of participatory mapping with 184 persons that were digitized and analyzed with GIS and statistical software. During the analysis, we identified CES hotspots and compared CES with landscape features, as well as CES perception with accessibility. Our results showed positive correlation of CES with land covers related to built-up areas, as well as aesthetic and recreational services with water bodies. Compared to other studies, we found different spatial relationships in the case of spiritual services, and higher importance of agricultural land covers during the CES perception, thanks to the Central-Eastern European (CEE) sociocultural background. Our study highlights the effect of accessibility on CES perception; nevertheless, these relationships varied by different infrastructural elements. We conclude by discussing the implications and limitations of our study and encouraging future landscape research to apply the PPGIS method in this geographical context.

KW - Accessibility

KW - Central-Eastern Europe

KW - Cultural ecosystem services (CES)

KW - Public participation GIS (PPGIS)

KW - Sociocultural perception

KW - Spatial analyses

U2 - 10.3390/su14020754

DO - 10.3390/su14020754

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85123024563

VL - 14

JO - Sustainability

JF - Sustainability

SN - 2071-1050

IS - 2

M1 - 754

ER -