Mapping forest ecosystem services: From providing units to beneficiaries Ana P. García-Nieto a , Marina García-Llorente a,b , Irene Iniesta-Arandia a , Berta Martín-López a,n a Social–Ecological Systems Laboratory, Department of Ecology, c. Darwin, Edificio Biología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain b Sociology of Climate Change and Sustainable Development research group, Political Science and Sociology Dpt. Universidad Carlos III, 28903 Getafe, Madrid, Spain article info Article history: Received 13 April 2012 Received in revised form 14 December 2012 Accepted 28 March 2013 Keywords: Ecosystem service bundle Hotspot Protected area Scale mismatch Stakeholder Trade-off abstract Some of the main research questions in the assessment ecosystem services include how to integrate ecological and social information into the analysis and how to make it spatially explicit. We mapped six ecosystem services delivered by forests in the Sierra Nevada Mountains (south-east Spain) from the supply- to the demand-sides, taking into account the influence of protected areas on the capacity of supply services. Semi-structured interviews and geographical information system sources were used to map the supply-side, whereas 205 face-to-face questionnaires were distributed to assess and map the demand-side. Our results show the existence of consistent ecosystem service bundles in terms of both the supply- and demand-sides, particularly between erosion control–recreational hunting and between mushroom harvesting–nature tourism. We found a spatial scale mismatch for the erosion control, with its supply at the local scale and its demand at the regional–national scales, with implications at the institutional scale at which it should be managed. Consequently, mapping both the supply- and demand- sides is essential for environmental decision making because it can indicate where management interventions should be focused, either by defining high-priority areas for protection or defining the institutional scale at which these services should be managed. & 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The ecosystem service concept is currently the focus of both scientific activities (Fisher et al., 2009; Vihervaara et al., 2010; Seppelt et al., 2011) and environmental policy actions, e.g., the Intergovern- mental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Ser- vices (IPBES) and the targets of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) for the year 2020. Despite the increasing scientific and political attention on ecosystem services, several research areas need to incorporate the ecosystem service framework into environmental conservation programmes. One of the most important gaps in scientific knowledge is related to the spatial distribution of multiple ecosystem services from a multidisciplinary approach, which involves the use of biophysical and socio-economic information (Anton et al., 2010). As the evaluation of ecosystem services addresses the complex relationships between humans and ecosys- tems ((MA) Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005; Bennett et al., 2009; Martín-López et al., 2009), attempts to define the spatial analysis of ecosystem services should include both the capacity of the ecosystems to deliver services to society, i.e., the supply-side, and the social demand for using a particular ecosystem service in a specific area, i.e., the demand-side (Tallis and Polasky, 2009; De Groot et al., 2010; Haines-Young and Postchin, 2010; Bastian et al., 2012). The capacity of ecosystems to supply particular services that benefit people is usually considered to be a service-providing unit (SPU), i.e., the ecosystem structures and processes that provide a specific ecosystem service at a particular spatial scale (Luck et al., 2009; Harrington et al., 2010). If the capacity of a SPU is changed, the satisfaction of social demands for the ecosystem service might be affected (Burkhard et al., 2012). The ecosystem service beneficiaries (ESBs) are those stakeholders who benefit from and demand of the ecosystem services or someone who is or may be involved or affected positively by a given environmental or management public policy (modified from Harrington et al. (2010))(Fig. 1). Box 1 shows the definitions of the key concepts used in this study. Despite the importance of the spatial identification and delinea- tion of SPUs and ecosystem service demands, its integrated analysis remains a key challenging research issue (Anton et al., 2010; De Groot et al., 2010; Reyers et al., 2010; Seppelt et al., 2011), and few studies have spatially analysed both sides of ecosystem service assessment (e.g., van Jaarsveld et al., 2005; McDonald, 2009; Burkhard et al., 2012; Kroll et al., 2012). In fact, the identification of supply-demand mismatches across landscapes is also one of the key Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecoser Ecosystem Services 2212-0416/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2013.03.003 Abbreviations: ESBs, ecosystem service beneficiaries; MCA, multiple correspon- dence analysis; PCA, principal component analysis; SPUs, service-providing units. n Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 914976725; fax: +34 914978001. E-mail address: berta.martin@uam.es (B. Martín-López). Please cite this article as: García-Nieto, A.P., et al., Mapping forest ecosystem services: From providing units to beneficiaries. Ecosystem Services (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2013.03.003i Ecosystem Services ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎