The Counterpart of Urban Forest’s Benefits: Looking at perceived disservices to close the loop
The positive effects of urban forests are well researched — so what about the negative ones?
Surely, most researchers might have read so many excellent papers about nature’s cultural ecosystem services that they feel well informed about this kind of research. Some may even be bored to read another paper-title dealing with this topic. Hasn’t everything been researched and said about this already?
Certainly not. And much less has been said about the negative contributions of nature to people’s wellbeing. So, what about functions or properties of ecosystems that cause effects that are perceived as harmful, unpleasant, or unwanted? These negative effects are encompassed by the term ecosystem disservices. Disservices research has not yet been given equal attention in the past, and there is no clear framework for them, as there is for the positive side with the Millennium Ecosystem Services Assessment.
Moreover— and equal to cultural ecosystem services research — , research on disservices is quite complex, since they are often of immaterial, intangible nature: Disservices do not exist independently but arise from people’s interactions with and perceptions of the ecosystem: there are no disservices without people.
So far, only few studies have dealt with urban nature’s disservices and even less with special focus on urban forests, thus omitting an important part of human-forest-relationships.
Urban forest ecosystems might be unpleasant in terms of allergy, animal attacks, darkness and blocked view, cracked sidewalks, volatile organic compounds and costs for maintenance. More than that, people may experience disservices of anthropogenic origin when visiting urban forests — such as fear of crime due to darkness and blocked view, dirt road conditions from forestry activities, unpleasant garbage or even other urban forest users. While some studies have focused on respective disservices in the past, there are hardly any studies that aimed to rank the relevance of perceived disservices in general in urban forests.
What kind of disservices are more relevant to people: such caused by the ecosystem itself or such caused by people and their traces?
In order to close the loop, we aimed to provide answers to this research question. For this purpose, we applied PPGIS-methods in three urban forests in Germany’s Southwest. We revealed that negative perceptions of urban forest visitors originated broadly from people and their traces — and rarely from the ecosystem itself. In fact, the disservices that were stated the most by study participants were anthropogenic noise, garbage, and dogs and their owners (AN). In contrast, roughly seven percent of stated disservices originated from the ecosystem itself (ESD).
However, to put these findings into perspective: Most visitors still find cultural ecosystem services in urban forests: about 85% of mapped places were associated with positive values — that’s good news!
Full study: Baumeister, C. F., Gerstenberg, T., Plieninger, T., & Schraml, U. (2022). Geography of disservices in urban forests: public participation mapping for closing the loop. Ecosystems and People, 18(1), 44–63.
Further studies:
Gerstenberg, T., Baumeister, C. F., Schraml, U., & Plieninger, T. (2020). Hot routes in urban forests: The impact of multiple landscape features on recreational use intensity. Landscape and Urban Planning, 203. doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2020.103888
Baumeister, C. F., Gerstenberg, T., Plieninger, T., & Schraml, U. (2020). Exploring cultural ecosystem service hotspots: Linking multiple urban forest features with public participation mapping data. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 48. doi:10.1016/j.ufug.2019.126561
