1 Paper title: The importance of landscape characteristics for the delivery of cultural ecosystem services Authors: Lucy E. Ridding 1 , John W. Redhead 1 , Tom H. Oliver 1,2 , Reto Schmucki 1 , James McGinlay 3 , Anil R. Graves 3 , Joe Morris 3 , Richard B. Bradbury 4 , Helen King 3,5 and James M. Bullock 1 Affiliations: 1 NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Maclean Building, Benson Lane, Crowmarsh Gifford, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, UK, OX10 8BB 2 School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 217, Reading, Berkshire RG6 6AH, UK 3 School of Energy, Environment and Agri-Food, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL, UK 4 RSPB Centre for Conservation Science, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, The Lodge, Sandy, Bedfordshire, SG19 2DL, UK 5 Faculty of Business and Law, Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, UK, MK7 6AL Corresponding Author: Lucy E. Ridding – email: lucridd@ceh.ac.uk , phone: 01491692374 John W. Redhead: johdhe@ceh.ac.uk Tom H. Oliver: t.oliver@reading.ac.uk Reto Schmucki: retoschm@ceh.ac.uk James McGinlay: j.mcginlay@cranfield.ac.uk Anil R. Graves: a.graves@cranfield.ac.uk Joe Morris: j.morris@cranfield.ac.uk Richard B. Bradbury: Richard.Bradbury@rspb.org.uk Helen King: helen.king@live.co.uk James M. Bullock: jmbul@ceh.ac.uk Date of manuscript: 13 th April 2017 Manuscript word count: 8,425