Geography of disservices in urban forests: public participation mapping for closing the loop

ABSTRACT Studies on cultural ecosystem services (CES) in urban forests using Public Participation GIS mapping are a well-established field of research. However, far fewer studies do exist that also illuminate perceived disservices, thus omitting an important part of human-forest relationships. Advancing knowledge on unpleasant places can promote outdoor recreation and help forest managers focus on disservices that matter. This study aims at spatially identifying people’s perceptions in urban forests with focus on unpleasant experiences. We elicited perceived disservices and CES spatially by collecting Public Participation GIS data (PPGIS) from city dwellers in three urban forests in Germany’s Southwest (755 respondents mapped 1552 places of disservices). We investigated relationships between sociodemographic characteristics and the number of mapped places using Spearman’s rank. We also explored the spatial concurrence between disservices and CES using Spearman’s rank. We identified a hierarchy of importance of forest visitors’ perceived dislikes. We revealed that negative perceptions of urban forest visitors originated broadly from people and their traces and rarely from the ecosystem according to existing ecosystem disservices typologies (EDS). We found a significant relationship between age and the number of mapped services. We found clusters of disliked places and correlations between disservices and CES, indicating that hotspots of CES in turn are also hotspots of disservices. We conclude that city foresters may best address disservices by advancing guidance-concepts for spatial movements of urban forest visitors within the forest to avoid conflicting clusters of various stakeholders. Our results may help city foresters to better manage both the forest and visitors’ various interests.