Perception of ecosystem services and disservices on a peri-urban communal forest: Are landowners’ and visitors’ perspectives dissimilar?

Abstract

Galician communal forests are private lands collectively owned by the neighbours of the rural settlement where they are located. Their societal role shifted from the support of the traditional agrarian system in the past, to a variety of situations nowadays. The intrinsic characteristics of these social-ecological units make them a promising opportunity for rural development in the region that calls for more scientific attention on the arena of ecosystem services. In this study, we investigated the social perception and valuation of a comprehensive range of ecosystem services and disservices on the peri-urban communal forests of Mount Xalo (NW Spain), distinguishing among the perspectives of landowners and various visitor types. For this, we used a socio-cultural approach consisting of 175 semi-quantitative surveys that included a basic Public Participation Geographic Information System. Our results showed that Mt. Xalo is a well recognised provider of ecosystem services that constitutes a local hotspot in the region. The most frequently perceived and most valued ecosystem services within ecosystem services classes were the provision of drinking water, the practice of sports, climate regulation and a group of three cognitive cultural ecosystem services: socializing, mythical features and sense of place. Nevertheless, nuances were noticed among landowners and visitor types following a rural-urban gradient where landowners and urban users presented the most significant differences. These findings address recognition to the actual role of these communal forests for society and call for collaboration with public institutions to facilitate the sustainable management of their resources.