Participatory mapping to elicit cultural coastal values for Marine Spatial Planning in a remote archipelago

As Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) is taking off world-wide as a holistic approach to marine management, there has been a growing need for the inclusion of socio-economic factors in this process. Yet, producing spatial data for cultural values, in particular, remain a challenge because these values are abstract and difficult to extract and quantify. Here, we demonstrate a simple repeatable manual technique for mapping cultural coastal values using in-person interviews and Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) techniques. With 47 participants in the Falkland Islands labelling 745areas of cultural coastal value, this technique gave rise to the identification of cultural coastal value hotspots across the islands in four categories: Natural Beauty, Recreation, Sense of Place and Cultural History. The locations of values were not affected by their distance to a settlement, nor were participants particularly likely to select areas close to their home. The resulting maps of coastal cultural values have been incorporated in the MSP framework and webGIS for the Falkland Islands, allowing for the integration of these social factors in the decision making processes.