Interdisciplinary US-European Workshop on Landscape-Based Cultural Ecosystem Services

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Policy makers and the general public have joined scientists in recognizing that human wellbeing depends on sustaining the health and vigor of the earth's ecosystems. This NSF award provides support for 10 ecologists, social scientists and landscape planners selected from across the US to participate with European colleagues in a 5-day workshop devoted to advancing scientific understanding of cultural ecosystems services, including aesthetic and recreational experiences, cultural heritage, and sense of place. Cultural services are highly valued in their own right by people in the US, Europe and throughout the world, with the particular origins, compositions and expressions of appreciation being nuanced by regional environmental and cultural histories and contexts. The appreciation of cultural services also plays a central role in determining peoples' dispositions toward policies aimed at protecting ecosystems and ecological processes that provide essential, but often less intuitively appreciated services, especially regulatory and support services. The principal goals of the workshop are to assess and document the state of science for cultural ecosystems services, with specific attention to similarities and differences between US and European contexts; to develop and promote an agenda for accomplishing needed research and education; to better integrate cultural services into the broader ecosystems services science and policy framework; and to identify and facilitate opportunities to leverage public support for other essential but less readily appreciated ecosystems and services. The workshop will bring together bio-physical and social science perspectives from the US, where natural ecosystems and landscape values have typically been emphasized, and Europe, where there has been greater focus on modified ecosystems and their associated cultural heritage values. Key products from the workshop include specific proposals for collaborative US and European interdisciplinary research projects to address identified needs. The PI and his counterpart Dr. Andreas Muhar of the BOKU University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna are coordinating the workshop together and aim to hold the meeting at the WasserKluster Lunz research station in Lunz, Austria in November 2009.