MobilES - Using mobile-phone technology to capture ecosystem service information

尽管生态系统服务对人类福祉至关重要，但生态系统服务-大自然对人类的贡献-日益受到人类活动的威胁（例如过度开发和退化）。ES的重要性在全球范围内得到认可。例如，127个联合国成员国已经签署了生物多样性和生态系统服务政府间科学政策平台（IPBES; www.ipbes.net）。柬埔寨（一个高度依赖农业部门但城市化程度不断提高的快速发展中国家）是这些签署国之一，并通过若干国家层面的政策（如国家绿色增长政策和战略计划）进一步表明其致力于可持续发展的意愿和承诺。然而，柬埔寨皇家政府认为，由于环境科学的历史偏见，需要更多关于如何更好地管理环境科学的可用性、获取、利用和稳定性的信息我们使用移动的电话调查管理沿着农村和城市的频谱，以调查人们如何访问和使用ES，这些利益如何促进人们的福祉，障碍如何阻止或减少这些利益，这些过程中的每一个的可持续性，并通过确定恢复的途径。我们将把社会科学理论融入到生态系统的流程和使用中，以改变现有的生态系统模型，建立生态系统研究的阶段性变化，将重点从自然生态系统转移到人类受益者。最后，我们将验证我们基于智能手机的技术方法，并深入了解城乡范围内的生态系统获取，使用和恢复能力。利用移动的技术分发调查有许多潜在的好处，包括：1）使参与者能够在适合他们的时间对调查作出答复，从而使那些没有时间离开工作的弱势群体能够参与; 2）捕捉人与自然之间在空间和时间上的独特联系，这种联系可能是个人独有的，并随着时间的推移而变化; 3）具有扩大规模的潜力，能够将社会科学“大数据”纳入ES模型。因此，一旦经过适当验证，基于智能手机的数据收集方法具有内在的可扩展性，因此可以在大区域收集社会科学数据，并将其纳入模型，以解决生态系统变化对不同规模的区域和社会经济群体的多层面福祉的影响问题。在此建议的进展有助于确保环境服务研究促进和通报正在进行的政策进程（例如政府间科学政策平台），并促进制定环境服务指标，以监测人类福祉，并在柬埔寨及其他地区建立恢复能力的途径。

Despite being vital for human well-being, ecosystem services (ES) - nature's contributions to people - are increasingly threatened by human activities (e.g. overexploitation and degradation). The importance of ES is globally recognised. For example, 127 United Nation member states have signed up to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES; www.ipbes.net). Cambodia (a rapidly developing nation with a high reliance on the agricultural sector but experiencing increasing urbanisation) is among these signatories and has further demonstrated its willingness and commitment to work towards sustainable development by several national-level policies (e.g. National Policy and Strategic Plan on Green Growth). However, the Royal Government of Cambodia has identified a need for more information on how to better manage availability, access, utilisation and stability of ES, arising from a historical bias within ES science (implicitly a social-ecological system linking nature and people) towards ecology at the expense of social science.We use mobile phone surveys administered along the rural-urban spectrum to investigate how people access and use ES, from which ecosystems, how such benefits contribute to people's well-being, how barriers prevent or reduce these benefits, the sustainability of each of these processes, and by identifying pathways to resilience. We will incorporate social science theories into flows and use of ES to transform existing ES models, establishing a step-change in ES research that shifts the focus from natural ecosystems to human beneficiaries.Finally, as well as providing insight into ES access, use and resilience across the rural-urban spectrum, we will validate our technological, smartphone-based approach. Utilising mobile technology to distribute surveys has many potential benefits, including: 1) enabling participants to respond to surveys at a time that suits them , therefore allowing the inclusion of vulnerable groups who can ill afford time away from work to participate; 2) capturing spatially and temporally distinct links between people and nature, which may be unique to the individual and shift over time; and 3) having the potential to be up-scaled, enabling for the inclusion of social science 'big data' in ES models. Thus, once properly validated, the smartphone-based method of data collection is inherently scalable and so might enable social science data to be collected over large regions and incorporated into models to address questions about the impacts of ecosystem change on the multidimensional well-being of regional and social-economic groups across scales.In partnership with decision-makers, the advances suggested here could help to ensure ES research contributes to and informs ongoing policy processes (e.g. IPBES) and facilitates the development of ES indicators for monitoring of human well-being and building pathways to resilience in Cambodia and beyond.