Marine and coastal ecosystems have provided us with cultural ecosystem services such as beach recreation, recreational fishing, and aesthetic or spiritual spots. Cultural ecosystem services have attracted attention in recent years from the viewpoint of improving psychological human well-beings as well as providing economic values through sightseeing and recreation. However, quantitative evaluation of cultural ecosystem services provided by seascape is not enough.
In this research, I compared the relationship between the characteristics of the coastal landscape such as land use type around the coast and population density, and each cultural service type (ex. beach recreation, aesthetic sites). As a result, beach recreation sites had not only plain sandy landscapes but more accommodation facilities in the surroundings, whereas scenic spots were not necessarily located in environments with lots of accommodation facilities. In addition, the scenic spots tended to be the refuges for endangered water species. These results indicated some types of cultural services that people enjoy often face the tradeoffs or synergies between service supply. Quantifying ecosystem services with a spatially explicit approach, and analyzing tradeoffs or synergies, can help to manage natural resources more effectively and defensibly.