Mario Torralba

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | VU · The Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM)

Context Often called a ‘Garden city’, Bengaluru is renowned for its green infrastructure. However, the association of human wellbeing with the amount of tree cover (as an example of green infrastructure), degree of urbanization, and local people's socio-demographics has not been explored. Objective We investigated how human wellbeing is related to...

Advancing research and practice that recognize diverse worldviews, knowledge systems, and value orientations is essential to enable transformative change towards sustainability. Biocultural approaches recognize the diverse ways in which people relate to nature, offering a potential pathway for sustainability transformations. However, recent scholar...

Biocultural approaches that acknowledge the multiple and dynamic relationships between the diversity of cultures and nature are growing in popularity in sustainability research. Scientific contributions to biocultural approaches written in Spanish are numerous, including influential work on biocultural memory, biocultural heritage and biocultural e...

Photovoice is a participatory research method based on participant-led photography and dialogue. It is particularly suited to engaging vulnerable groups to visually document a specific issue that affects their personal lives. Because photovoice is based on images and language alike, it encourages participants to reflect on the issue and elevates ma...

Rural abandonment is a significant process in the Mediterranean region, posing sustainability challenges for rural and urban areas. Although there is an increase in studies focusing on the ecological implications and impacts of land abandonment and the role of rewilding, there is a knowledge gap in the study of the socio-cultural dimension of aband...

Context The management of Portuguese agroforestry landscapes is currently focused on specialised cork and cattle production. Sustainable landscape management is increasingly discussed as an effective option to foster the multifunctionality of these landscapes. Such management requires consideration of multiple values connected to the landscape and...

Ecosystem services provided by green infrastructure are often discussed for their potential to address the societal challenges of urbanization. However, green infrastructure, particularly small-scale types (e.g. trees), is vulnerable to loss through urbanization and is often passed over during scientific investigations. Studies on the perceptions o...

Landscape approaches are gaining momentum in both scientific and policy agendas. However, landscape approaches comprise a multitude of concepts, approaches and principles, which are in part similar, in some parts different or even contradictory. In this paper, we used a Q-method questionnaire to explore how landscape approaches are understood and e...

The development of societies, including spiritual development, is closely connected to forests. The larger interrelations among changing societies, transforming forest landscapes, and evolving spiritual values related to forests have yet to be extensively considered. Addressing this research gap is important to avoid the neglect of spiritual values...

Europe's forest provide multiple ecosystem services for societies, ranging from provisioning (e.g. wood) and regulating (e.g. climate mitigation and biodiversity) to cultural (e.g. recreation) services. In this paper, we assess the state and prospects of forest ecosystem services provision in Europe, introducing new data from the European collabora...

A very severe drought, early in the growing season, engulfed Morocco this year. This is not the first, but one in a series of dry years. Many farmers already used up their financial reserves, and it remains unclear how they will cope yet again. This essay combines photography with short interviews to recognise the implications of drought for Moroc...

In this study, we bring together participatory mapping and analysis of geolocated social media content from the Flickr platform in an assessment of similarities and differences in their utility for landscape value elicitation. We do so in a Pan-European context comparing types of landscape values and their spatial patterns across 19 case sites in 1...

Restoring, maintaining, and developing green and blue infrastructure (GBI) in cities is a key strategy to safeguard ecosystem services and human well-being under conditions of rapid urbanization. Developing “blue infrastructure” is a new concept, but there are diverse historically grown water management systems that have the potential to inform con...

This paper analyses the occurrence of governance innovations for forest ecosystem service (FES) provision in the forestry sector in Europe and the factors that influence innovation development. Based on a European-wide online survey, public and private forest owners and managers representing different property sizes indicate what type of governance...

Participatory mapping is a useful approach to engage the general public and stakeholders to communicate place-based values, behaviour, preferences and observations. The approach informs social-ecological research and land-use planning. In land-use planning, PPGIS is applicable, for example, in initial phases or for assessing project outcomes. This...

Forests are key components of European multifunctional landscapes and supply numerous forest ecosystem services (FES) fundamental to human well-being. The sustainable provision of FES has the potential to provide responses to major societal challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, or rural development. To identify suitable strategies...

Traditional farming landscapes in South and Central Portugal, known as montados, are affected by global socioeconomic and biophysical pressures, putting the sustainability of the systems in jeopardy. Cork oak trees (Quercus suber L.) are characteristic features of these complex agro-silvo-pastoral agroforestry systems, delivering a globally importa...

Though urban land covers only around 0.5% of the Earth's terrestrial surface, urbanization often leads to significant changes in land use and land cover. However, knowledge on the ecological and social outcomes of urbanization is largely fragmented across a multitude of local-level studies. We synthesized the outcomes of urbanization on 15 ecologic...

Biosphere reserves (BR) balance biodiversity protection and sustainable use through different management restrictions in three zones: core areas, buffer zones, and transition areas. Information about the links between zoning and ecosystem services (ES) is lacking, particularly in terms of the relative roles of natural contributions (ecosystem prope...

Context Global dynamics affect the sustainability of agricultural landscapes, but these cross-scale connections are understudied. Therefore, we combine food systems and landscape ecology, focusing on food products that provide a linkage between global consumers and landscapes of production (e.g., Douro Valley wine) which we call landscape products....

Rural Europe encompasses a variety of landscapes with differing levels of forest, agriculture, and agroforestry that can deliver multiple ecosystem services (ES). Whilst provisioning and regulating ES associated with individual land covers are comparatively well studied, less is known about the associated cultural ES. Only seldom are provisioning,...

In the Mediterranean basin, climate models predict future scenarios characterized by more frequently uncertain hydrological services. European policies increasingly promote new models of water management based on river basins as socioecological systems and participatory strategies to ensure better inclusiveness and representativeness of all local a...

Context Global dynamics affect the sustainability of agricultural landscapes, but these cross-scale connections are understudied. Therefore, we combine food systems and landscape ecology, focusing on food products that provide a linkage between global consumers and landscapes of production (e.g., Douro Valley wine) which we call landscape products....

Sacred groves are important for the conservation of biodiversity in the Middle East, as more formal approaches to protected areas have often failed in this global biodiversity hotspot. This study aims to identify the most important social values, taboos and perceived threats around sacred groves in the Kurdistan province of Iran. We test whether va...

The study of the evolution and change of landscapes' ecological conditions through history has fascinated professional and amateur scientists for centuries. However, the understanding of why these changes happen and what these changes fully entail is still an emerging field of research, which nowadays broadly covers the study of the evolution of la...

The ecosystem services framework has become one of the most important paradigms in forest planning and management as a way to link the multiple provisioning, regulating, and cultural services derived from ecosystems and their benefits to human well-being. Recently, there have been multiple efforts in emphasizing the importance of cultural ecosystem...

Current sustainability challenges demand approaches that acknowledge a plurality of human–nature interactions and worldviews, for which biocultural approaches are considered appropriate and timely. This systematic review analyses the application of biocultural approaches to sustainability in scientific journal articles published between 1990 and 20...

Multifunctional landscapes provide critical benefits and are essential for human well‐being. The relationship between multifunctional landscapes and well‐being has mostly been studied using ecosystem services as a linkage. However, there is a challenge of concretizing what human well‐being exactly is and how it can be measured, particularly in rela...

Mediterranean socio-ecological systems (SES) are complex systems. They involve humans as part of nature while encompassing a wide variety of natural and semi-natural landscapes, including also areas with high levels of population density. Mediterranean landscapes have evolved as a result of centuries of land-use intervention and interaction with hu...

Context Around 30% of European agricultural landscapes are classified as high nature value (HNV) farmlands. Current policies emphasize the multifunctionality of these landscapes, but little is known about the positive and negative associations of multiple ecosystem services within HNV farmland. Objectives This study aims to identify perceived ecos...

Rural development policies in many Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries promote sustainable landscape management with the intention of providing multiple ecosystem services (ES). Yet, it remains unclear which ES benefits are perceived in different landscapes and by different people. We present an assessment...

With a growing human population, we are faced with the challenge of managing limited spaces for multiple social and environmental needs. Identifying opportunities to align social and environmental needs is thus a transdisciplinary design challenge. To meet this task, we present the concept of spatiotemporal multifunctionality (i.e. the provisioning...

The study assessed the economic performance of marketable ecosystem services (ES) (biomass production) and non-marketable ecosystem services and dis-services (groundwater, nutrient loss, soil loss, carbon sequestration, pollination deficit) in 11 contrasting European landscapes dominated by agroforestry land use compared to business as usual agricu...

Wood-pastures are complex social-ecological systems (SES), which are the product of long-term interaction between society and its surrounding landscape. Traditionally characterized by multifunctional low-intensity management that enhanced a wide range of ecosystem services (ES), current farm management has shifted toward more intensive farm models....

Key Words: agricultural landscape ecosystem services silvopastoralism sustainability wood-pasture Rangelands in Europe are imprinted by livestock production and embedded in mosaic landscapes of grasslands, croplands, woodlands, and settlements. They developed as social-ecological systems: People managed rangelands in order to maintain or enhance th...

This report provides an overview of the main social methods for mapping and assessment of ecosystem services. It addresses the challenge of improving the applicability of these methods with specific examples, particularly with respect to the MAES process and the ESMERALDA case studies. In this context, the term “mapping” is used to mean the descrip...

The wood pastures or hardwood rangelands of the southwestern Iberian Peninsula are complex social-ecological systems created from the long-term interaction of society and the landscape. Dehesa, oak woodlands managed for grazing, cropping, and other forms of production, is the most common rangeland system and one of the most distinctive landscapes....

Land-use change is the major driver of biodiversity loss. However, taxonomic diversity (TD) and functional diversity (FD) might respond differently to land-use change, and this response might also vary depending on the biotic group being analysed. In this study, we compare the TD and FD of four biotic groups (ants, birds, herbaceous, woody vegetati...