Mapping Land Covers as Potential Green Infrastructure for Human Well-being in Rural Settings

Abstract

Green infrastructure (GI) policy encourages spatial planning of natural and semi-natural areas that deliver biodiversity conservation and a wide range of ecosystem services (ES) important to human well-being. Much of the current literature relies on expert-led, top-down processes to investigate connections between landscapes and ES. Little is known regarding the preferences of residents, and how they connect land covers with delivery of ES important for their well-being. We identify and locate different land cover types as GI hubs and hotspots that provide multiple ES important for human well-being in rural settings. First, we surveyed 400 urban and rural residents to identify ES important for personal well-being and the land covers that deliver multiple ES in three counties that best represent the existing rural-urban gradient in Sweden. Second, to support planners' inclusion of GI we identified and located spatial concentrations of individual land covers providing multiple ES (GI hubs) and significant clusters of such land covers (GI hotspots). The majority of urban and rural respondents associated their well-being with lakes, mountains above the tree-line, old-growth forests, wooded-pastures, mature pine forests and rural farmsteads. The area proportion of each type of land cover hub is low and on average 3.5%. At least three land management strategies are needed to sustain GI hubs: 1) to maintain the composition, structure and function of natural ecosystems; 2) to support traditional agroforestry and villages as social-ecological systems; and 3) to diversify the current intensive forest management approach.