Fresh fodder for future findings: Mapping plural values of grasslands and their ecosystem services

So far, ecosystem service research in grasslands has mainly focused on provisioning services and their economic values; however, calls for plural valuation have become more prominent in recent times. In fact, the inclusion of instrumental, relational and intrinsic values in an assessment of ecosystem services can reveal further reasons by which people express the importance of nature and their ecosystem services. In their paper, Schmitt et al. (2022) analyze the spatial distribution of these values in grasslands.

While instrumental values reflect direct and indirect benefits people can obtain from ecosystem services, intrinsic values represent the ethical rights of nature. In this study, the authors chose to examine ‘subjective’ intrinsic value, which accounts for the idea that humans can express regard for nature regardless of any potential human interest. Moreover, they explored relational values that represent the manifold relationship humans have with nature or human relations fostered by nature. To account…