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--自然对人类的贡献--正日益受到人类活动(如过度开发和退化)的威胁。ES的重要性得到了全球的认可。例如，127个联合国会员国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(一个快速发展的国家，高度依赖农业部门，但正在经历日益城市化)是这些签署国之一，并通过几项国家一级政策(如国家政策和绿色增长战略计划)进一步表明其努力实现可持续发展的意愿和承诺。然而，柬埔寨王国政府发现，需要更多关于如何更好地管理生态系统的可获得性、获取、利用和稳定性的信息，这是由于生态系统科学(隐含着一个连接自然和人的社会生态系统)以社会科学为代价而产生的历史偏见。我们使用沿农村-城市范围管理的移动电话调查来调查人们如何获取和使用生态系统，从哪些生态系统中获取和使用生态系统，这些好处如何为人民的福祉做出贡献，障碍如何阻止或减少这些好处，每个过程的可持续性，以及通过确定恢复能力的途径。我们将把社会科学理论融入到ES的流动和使用中，以改变现有的ES模型，建立ES研究的阶段性变化，将重点从自然生态系统转移到人类利益。最后，除了提供对ES在城乡范围内的访问、使用和弹性的洞察，我们还将验证我们基于智能手机的技术方法。利用移动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回答调查，从而允许将无力抽出工作时间参与调查的弱势群体包括在内；2)捕捉人与自然之间在空间和时间上的不同联系，这种联系可能是个人独有的，随着时间的推移而变化；以及3)具有扩大规模的潜力，使得能够在ES模型中纳入社会科学的“大数据”。因此，一旦得到适当验证，基于智能手机的数据收集方法具有内在的可伸缩性，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区域和不同规模的社会经济群体的多维福祉的影响问题。在与决策者的合作下，这里建议的进展可以帮助确保生态系统研究有助于正在进行的政策进程(例如，国际可持续发展教育系统)并为其提供信息，并促进制定生态系统指标，以监测柬埔寨及其他地区的人类福祉和建立复原力的途径。

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.