Towards a non-monetary valuation of forest ecosystem services at local level – a study in Germany

Abstract The ecosystem service (ES) concept and their non-monetary socio-cultural valuation is less established for forests than for landscapes. We assessed 15 ESs including provisioning areas and flows of an urban and a rural municipal forest (Augsburg, Germany). For valuation, we used stakeholder elicitation (label: All.stakeholders ), categories of well-being ( MEA ), range of benefiting areas ( Place.of.use ) and Number.of.users and assessed their agreement for ES values, cluster-based ES bundles and ES multifunctionality using the Simpson diversity index. The urban and rural forest provided seven ESs (arithmetic mean) per pixel (arithmetic mean range: three to 13 ESs) and 242 different spatial combinations of ESs (ES bundles). Different non-monetary socio-cultural valuation approaches of ES created partially deviating rankings for the different indices (ES value and bundles or multifunctionality of ES). The valuation approaches hardly changed ES values and multifunctionality, both regarding their respective levels and their spatial configuration. ES bundles more strongly differed between the valuation approaches and the unweighted case without valuation. The valuation options prioritized other ESs than timber for most bundles in the urban forest and partially in the rural forest. The valuation options hardly changed the value of timber. Timber stayed relatively important in the rural forest and hardly important in the urban forest. Interestingly, the All.stakeholders , MEA , and Place.of.use valuation strongly agreed. The agreement of valuation approaches may partially question (local) stakeholder elicitation approaches provided the associated effort. The Number.of.users case showed the strongest differences. The parallel use of different valuation options may increase the validity through triangulation.