CultEs

Below you can find the two latest publications from the group related to PPGIS and value transfer. Enjoy the reading!

• Brown, Greg; Pullar, David; Hausner, Vera Helene. An empirical evaluation of spatial value transfer methods for identifying cultural ecosystem services. Ecological Indicators 2016; Volum 69. ISSN 1470-160X.s 1 – 11.s doi: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.03.053.

• Brown, Greg; Hausner, Vera Helene; Lægreid, Eiliv Jenssen. Physical landscape associations with mapped ecosystem values with implications for spatial value transfer: An empirical study from Norway. Ecosystem Services 2015; Volum 15. ISSN 2212-0416.s 19 – 34.s doi: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2015.07.005.

Christopher Monz and Ashley D’Antonio are visiting us to join for the field season in Varangerhalvøya and Jotunheimen national parks. All our fieldworkers are out in the field collecting data for four weeks. Varangerhalvøya will be challenging as our teams have to walk along 20 km transects bringing all their equipment with them. They will find many challenges on the way, such as unpredictable weather, unexpected abrupt changes on the landscape, and difficult terrain. The team in Jotunheimen may have easier terrain, but their sampling is more intensive, and this makes work really tough.

Good luck to all our fieldworkers!

The time for fieldwork has arrived, and our first team is already out in Varangerhalvøya national park to collect data. We will map ecosystem services using new technologies in Varangerhalvøya and Jotunheimen national parks. Soon we will be more out there collecting data!

Our stay in Santa Barbara has come to the end. Sigrid and Lorena are ready to go back to Tromsø, Norway, and continue with the work from there. We have done a lot of progress with regard to the upcoming fieldwork and analyzing the data gathered last summer. We are very happy to have met so many knowledgeable people in NCEAS, Santa Barbara, where they have hosted us for this month. We will soon present some people we met who are now collaborating with us.

We visited Utah State University (USU), Logan. Christopher Monz invited us to discuss our projects CultEs, ESArctic and Connect. We have had 4 days full of work and joy, with a lot of progress on planning our upcoming fieldwork in Varangerhalvøya and Jotunheimen national parks. We had the pleasure to present our project on a guest lecture.

Vera Hausner, our project leader broke the ice and introduced students to the Norwegian context and presented them our project. The PhD student Sigrid Engen talked about her work on analyzing exemptions on protected areas in Norland and Sogn og Fjordane area. Students got an insight on differences between Norway and USA with regard to protected areas and the use citizens do of them. The last presenter was Lorena Munoz, also a PhD student, who talked about spatial mapping of visitors’ values in Norway.

We also learnt from the American protected area system, which is quite different from the Norwegian system. Christopher Monz and Ashley D’Antonio introduced us to the US park system and monitoring approaches using SamplePoint software. Abigail Kidd and Robin Graham showed their work on GPS tracking for tourism monitoring.

Our time in USU was amazing, and we are looking forward to meeting our colleagues again. Big thanks to Christopher Monz, Ashley D’Antonio, Abigail Kidd and Robin Graham for making our stay so wonderful!

Exciting news are coming, stay tuned!

We are on our way to NCEAS in Santa Barbara, California. Sigrid Engen and Lorena Munoz are meeting Vera Hausner and Per Fauchald in Santa Barbara to spend a month working intensively on our project. We have lot to do, summer season is approaching!