There is a dichotomy in the view of wind farms among members of the public: on one hand, there is a desire for renewable energy sources, and on the other hand, there is a major concern about the visual impact of wind turbines used for power production. This concern for visual impact is a major...

An important determinant of ecosystem services provision from European farmland is the amount and spatial arrangement of trees, shrubs, and woodlands that are integrated into the respective land use systems. Farm trees are considered ‘keystone structures’ of agroecosystems because of their...

Work on common pool resources has paid scant attention to the role of properties of natural resources for the way their provision is governed. This paper scrutinizes determinants of institutions that regulate the provision of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Two cases of maintaining...

This paper compares the historic German discourse on forest functions with the current international debate on ecosystem services and analyzes the factors that may have triggered or inhibited the development and the institutionalization of both underlying concepts and subordinate debates....

Human well-being is tightly linked to the natural environment. Although this notion is well-established, it remains difficult to assess how the biophysical features of a specific area contribute towards the well-being of the people attached to it. We explore this topic using the case of four...

Despite rapid advancements in the development of non-monetary techniques for the assessment of social values for ecosystem services, little research attention has been devoted to the evaluation of their underpinning paradigms. This study evaluates two contrasting paradigms for the assessment of...

Attempts at assessing the values people attach to ecosystems reveal profound methodological gaps regarding the non-material domains associated with aesthetic, spiritual or heritage values. This paper presents a new approach for trying to grasp these intangible benefits-conceptualised as cultural...

In the semi-arid zones of the Eastern Mediterranean, husbandry of sheep and goats has been an integral part of livelihoods and survival strategies since the Neolithic, but underwent major changes after approximately the 1960s. In this paper, we analyse the landscape changes that were induced by...

Work on common pool resources has paid scant attention to the role of properties of natural resources for the way their provision is governed. This paper scrutinizes determinants of institutions that regulate the provision of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Two cases of maintaining...