Abstract for: Insight Maker(S) To Support The Management Of Protected Areas And Related Ecosystem Services: Examples For Recreational Value

The management of ecosystems and the resulting services requires exploring and understanding the complexity of both ecological and socio-economic processes. Participatory modelling approaches that involve the local stakeholders provide an opportunity for the managers of protected areas to promote a better comprehension of biodiversity conservation and to improve the modelling itself. In this study, we developed three generalised models of the cultural ecosystem service “recreational value” for small protected areas, such as those of the Natura 2000 network, considering three different contexts with an increasing number of “management variables”. The models are presented to potential users and stakeholders in the web-based interactive learning environment Insight Maker. Although further steps would be needed to translate the formed insights into decision support, such as quantitative analysis, assumption verification, model validation and calibration, these simplified models have an educational utility concerning the complexity of ecosystem services and may work as tools guiding towards social learning within social-ecological systems.