Stakeholder perspectives of wood-pasture ecosystem services: A case study from Iberian dehesas

- Dehesas are multi-functional systems since they provide ES to diverse stakeholder categories at local and regional levels of governance.
- Of 45 ES acknowledged, livestock, traditional knowledge, biodiversity, recreation and ecotourism, and education were most mentioned.
- Local stakeholders appreciated provisioning and cultural ES, whereas regional stakeholders acknowledged regulating and supporting ES more.
- Private and public sector respondents mentioned more provisioning ES, whereas the civil sector acknowledged supporting and regulating ES more.
- Traditional knowledge, cultural landscape and heritage values, rarely included into ES assessments, were most often-acknowledged ES in dehesas.

Ecosystem services (ES) research has rapidly gained momentum in environmental policy and practice. However, qualitative socio-cultural approaches are still limited, and therefore, ES important for people, are currently not commonly captured. We performed 34 face-to-face semi-structured interviews to describe stakeholders' appreciation of ES from dehesa landscapes in northern Extremadura, Spain. A total of 45 ES were mentioned, and compared among different sectors and levels of governance. At the local level, people appreciated especially provisioning and cultural services. In contrast, regional level respondents showed more appreciation for regulating and supporting services, which included biodiversity conservation and climate regulation. Private and public sector respondents appreciated provisioning services more, whereas the civil sector mentioned supporting and regulating services more. For instance, water regulation was only mentioned by civil and public sector respondents, while genetic resource preservation was only expressed by the private sector. All sectors noted cultural services as key ES. We discuss most mentioned ES by respondents, the co-production nature of ES in wood-pastures, as well as cultural services as key ES of dehesas in coupled social-ecological systems. We conclude with policy recommendations drawn from the insights of this study.