Woodland ecosystem services of the past and present in Herstmonceux and South England

Abstract

This thesis quantifies ecosystem services from broad- and mixed-leaved woodlands in the southern United Kingdom. Synthesizing concepts and approaches from historical ecology, environmental history, community ecology, dendrological allometry, and punctuated equilibrium theory, this thesis illuminates the multifaceted ways in which woodlands provide ecosystem services that are valued by people in the UK, both socially and ecologically. A complex relationship between people and woodlands emerges through time, which can be understood directly via management decisions, but also more abstractly through the sentiments that people attach to trees. Both of these approaches carry normative implications about the value of particular woodland ecosystem services. While the values that guided past decisions in woodland management are not always explicit, archival maps and remotely sensed data can reveal the nature of land use changes that manifest over long periods of time, i.e., 150 years. Within a case study context in Herstmonceux, East Sussex, archival data demonstrated a progression towards a modern day multifunctional wooded landscape.

Within this modern context, historical woodland management regimes like coppicing drive specific ecosystem services like biodiversity and carbon storage to change measurably on a near-annual basis. This indicates that historic management regimes have important implications for ecosystem service provision not just over the course of generations, but also on fairly short time frames, e.g., 15 years. Land managers of coppice woodlands must therefore be cognizant of how everyday land management decisions can impact the ecosystem services, and therefore values (both intrinsic and instrumental) derived from them. Importantly, land management decisions and regimes also change abruptly in response to exogenous factors. When extreme damage was caused to trees and woodlands as a result of the October 1987 Great Storm, there occurred a traceable punctuation reflected in both the public sentiment and the priorities of woodland managers regarding trees. Changes in woodland ecosystem services can thus be slow-moving or sudden. Ultimately, it is this complex, always-changing relationship between humans and the environment that shape not only the actual provision of ecosystem services, but also perceptions of that provision, and, furthermore, how ecosystem services themselves are valued.

The ecosystem services perspective, therefore, may be applied to and represent both intrinsic and instrumental values, rather than solely instrumental values, which has been a longstanding critique of the framework. However, researchers aiming to employ the ecosystem services framework in this manner must be intentional and explicit in their doing so, in order to shift the guiding paradigms in conservation away from “nature for people,” and towards a “people are nature” perspective.