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Um die Ziele des Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Frameworks zu erreichen, ist Engagement auf allen politischen Ebenen und in allen Sektoren nötig. Auch der Freistaat Sachsen muss seinen Beitrag leisten. Sachsen hat großes Potenzial, steht aber auch vor besonderen Herausforderungen. Fast die Hälfte der Landfläche wird landwirtschaftlich genutzt, hauptsächlich für Ackerbau. Doch nur etwa acht Prozent der Fläche wird ökologisch bewirtschaftet. Intensivierung und Monotonisierung der Landwirtschaft, sowie der Einsatz von Pestiziden und Düngemitteln, tragen erheblich zum Verlust der biologischen Vielfalt bei. Die Landwirtschaft spielt eine entscheidende Rolle als Lebensraum für Biodiversität. Es gilt, biodiversitätsfreundliche Nutzung zu fördern, den Anteil der Fläche mit ökologischem Landbau zu erhöhen und entsprechende Praktiken in der konventionellen Landwirtschaft zu etablieren. Sachsen ist auch als Erzeuger fossiler Energien, speziell durch das Lausitzer und das Mitteldeutsche Braunkohlerevier, stark von der Energiewende betroffen. Der Ausbau erneuerbarer Energien muss naturverträglich und im Einklang mit dem Biodiversitätsschutz erfolgen. Konzepte der multifunktionalen Landnutzung können hierbei unterstützen. Prof. Dr. Edeltraud Günther, Direktorin des UNU-FLORES, betont ebenfalls die Notwendigkeit, Biodiversität im Ressourcen-Nexus zu berücksichtigen. Sachsen hat gute Voraussetzungen, um diese Herausforderungen zu meistern. Mit dem Programm Sachsens Biologische Vielfalt 2030 verfügt es über eine Biodiversitätsstrategie, um die globalen Ziele zu erreichen. Darüber hinaus beherbergt Sachsen starke Forschungsinstitutionen, die sich intensiv dem Thema Biodiversität widmen. Forschung, Bildung und Wissenschaftskommunikation spielen hierbei eine zentrale Rolle. Prof. Tshilidzi Marwala, Rektor der UNU und Under-Secretary-General der UN, betonte in seiner Eröffnungsansprache der DNCi 2023 die Schlüsselrolle von Bildung: 'Bildung ist der Schlüssel, um unser Potenzial zu entfalten. Sie befähigt uns, Verwalter unserer Umwelt zu werden, indem sie uns eine tiefe Wertschätzung für die biologische Vielfalt vermittelt und zu nachhaltigen Praktiken in jedem Aspekt unseres Lebens inspiriert. Durch die Integration von transformierender Bildung auf internationaler, nationaler und lokaler Ebene können wir einen tiefgreifenden Wandel von Einstellungen, Wissen und Verhaltensweisen bewirken.“ Die Bedeutung von Bildung und Wissenschaftskommunikation zum Thema Biodiversität konnten die Teilnehmenden der DNCi 2023 dank einer Führung durch den Botanischen Garten praktisch erleben. Herzlichen Dank an Prof. Dr. Christoph Neinhuis, Direktor des Botanischen Gartens, und Dr. Barbara Dietsch, Wissenschaftliche Leitung des Botanischen Gartens, für diese wertvollen Einblicke. Im Rahmen der gemeinsam durch UNU-FLORES, dem IÖR und der TU Dresden organisierten DNCi 2023 ist es uns gelungen, unterschiedliche Akteure aus Wissenschaft, Regierung, Zivilgesellschaft und Privatwirtschaft zusammenzubringen und eine dynamische Plattform für Austausch und Zusammenarbeit zum Thema Biodiversität zu schaffen. Herzlicher Dank gilt allen Teilnehmenden für ihr Engagement im Rahmen der Veranstaltung und darüber hinaus dem Sächsischen Staatsministerium für Energie, Klimaschutz, Umwelt und Landwirtschaft für die Unterstützung der Veranstaltung im Rahmen seiner Kooperation mit UNU-FLORES.:VORWORT 5 Vorwort 6 Vorwort der Veranstalter:innen 8 EINLEITUNG 12 POLITIK IN SACHSEN 14 Handlungsempfehlungen für die Politik in Sachsen 16 WIRTSCHAFT IN SACHSEN 21 Handlungsempfehlungen für die Wirtschaft in Sachsen 22 LANDWIRTSCHAFT IN SACHSEN 26 Handlungsempfehlungen für die Landwirtschaft in Sachsen 28 BILDUNG IN SACHSEN 31 Handlungsempfehlungen für die Bildung in Sachsen 32 FAZIT 35 TEILNEHMENDE DER DNCi 2023 36 Thema Biodiversität in der Politik 38 Thema Biodiversität in der Landwirtschaft 39 Thema Biodiversität in der lokalen Wirtschaft 40 Thema Biodiversität in der Bildung für Nachhaltige Entwicklung 41 / Reaching the goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework requires commitment at all political levels and in all sectors. The State of Saxony also has to contribute its share. Saxony has a great potential, but also faces particular challenges. Almost half of the land area is used for agriculture, mainly for arable farming. However, only around eight percent of the land is farmed ecologically. Intensification and monotonization of agriculture, as well as the use of pesticides and fertilizers, significantly contribute to the loss of biodiversity. Agriculture plays a crucial role as a habitat for biodiversity. It is indispensable to promote biodiversity-friendly use, increase the proportion of land under organic farming, and establish corresponding methods in conventional agriculture. As a producer of fossil fuels, especially by the Lusatian and Central German lignite mining regions, Saxony is also strongly affected by the energy transition. The expansion of renewable energies needs to be nature-compatible and in harmony with the protection of biodiversity. Approaches to multifunctional landuse may provide support in this regard. Prof. Dr. Edeltraud Günther, Director of UNU-FLORES, emphasizes the need to consider biodiversity in the resource nexus. Saxony has good prerequisites to meet these challenges. With its Saxony Biodiversity 2030 Program, it has a revised biodiversity strategy to meet the global targets. In addition, Saxony is home to major research institutions that intensively focus on biodiversity. Research, education, and science communication play a central role in this context. Prof. Tshilidzi Marwala, Rector of UNU and Under-Secretary-General of the UN, emphasized the key role of education in his opening address of the DNCi 2023: 'Education is the key to unlock our potential. It empowers us to become stewards of our environment by providing us with a deep appreciation for biodiversity and inspiring sustainable practices in every aspect of our lives. By integrating transformative education at the international, national, and local levels, we can create profound change in attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors.' The DNCi 2023 participants had a hands-on experience of the importance of education and science communication on biodiversity thanks to a guided tour of the Botanical Garden. Many thanks to Prof. Dr. Christoph Neinhuis, Director of the Botanical Garden, and Dr. Barbara Dietsch, Scientific Director of the Botanical Garden, for these valuable insights. As part of the DNCi 2023, co-organized by UNU-FLORES, the IOER, and TU Dresden, we succeeded in bringing together different stakeholders from science, government, civil society, and the private sector to create a dynamic platform for exchange and collaboration on the topic of biodiversity. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all participants for their commitment during the event and beyond, and to the Saxon State Ministry of Energy, Climate Protection, Environment and Agriculture for supporting the event within the framework of its cooperation with UNU-FLORES.:VORWORT 5 Vorwort 6 Vorwort der Veranstalter:innen 8 EINLEITUNG 12 POLITIK IN SACHSEN 14 Handlungsempfehlungen für die Politik in Sachsen 16 WIRTSCHAFT IN SACHSEN 21 Handlungsempfehlungen für die Wirtschaft in Sachsen 22 LANDWIRTSCHAFT IN SACHSEN 26 Handlungsempfehlungen für die Landwirtschaft in Sachsen 28 BILDUNG IN SACHSEN 31 Handlungsempfehlungen für die Bildung in Sachsen 32 FAZIT 35 TEILNEHMENDE DER DNCi 2023 36 Thema Biodiversität in der Politik 38 Thema Biodiversität in der Landwirtschaft 39 Thema Biodiversität in der lokalen Wirtschaft 40 Thema Biodiversität in der Bildung für Nachhaltige Entwicklung 41

Forests provide immense goods and services to both local and regional communities. The USDA Forest Service’s, State and Private Forestry program administer multiple landowner assistance programs aimed at helping private forest owners while supporting the continued supply of ecosystem services (e.g., timber harvesting, recreation, carbon sequestration and storage). The two landowner assistance programs assessed in this study are the Forest Legacy Program (FLP) and the Forest Stewardship Program (FSP). A majority of the nation’s forests are privately owned, many of which are facing deleterious impacts like wildfires, invasive species, development pressures, and other adverse effects from climate change. The goal of this project is to (1) quantify the economic contributions emanating from lands participating in FLP and FSP in the conterminous US and (2) quantify and value the carbon sequestration on lands participating in FLP and FSP in New England. IMPLAN is an input-output modeling system, used in Chapter 1, that estimates how money flows through a regional economy. The results from the IMPLAN analysis suggest that FLP lands in the conterminous US contribute an estimated 4,560 jobs and $306.8 million in value-added from timber harvesting and recreation. Further, FSP lands contribute an estimated 27,700 jobs and $1.8 billion in value added from timber harvesting and recreation. Using Forest Inventory and Analysis carbon sequestration data and the social cost of carbon, the results of chapter 2 suggest that, in New England, FLP lands sequester 147,000 metric tons of CO2, or $7.5 million in aboveground CO2, per year. FSP lands in New England are estimated to sequester 82,000 metric tons of CO2, or $4.1 million in CO2, per year. Quantifying and estimating the economic and ecosystem service contributions emanating from lands participating in FLP and FSP provide a framework for understanding the total benefits associated with these programs (e.g., supporting rural economies, impacting climate change and the global carbon network, etc.).

The global threats of widespread biodiversity loss and climate change impact ecosystems daily, leading to far-reaching consequences for people who benefit from these systems in various ways. Despite these challenges, little is known about the differences in how people derive benefits from nature and who will become increasingly vulnerable to future global environmental change. Previous research has assessed the impact of inequality on nature’s benefits (or ecosystem services), but these efforts have primarily relied on socio-economic inequality measures. These measures overlook potential heterogeneity within groups based on characteristics such as gender, class, and ethnicity. Therefore, a multidimensional approach to understanding inequality is needed. This systematic mapping review aims to map the literature that explores multidimensional inequality in relation to ecosystem services (ES), specifically in terms of three types of ecosystem benefits: experience, use, and money. Key findings were that political-and economic inequalities are most frequently linked to all three types of benefits, with links between political inequality and the use of ES being particularly common in the literature. In contrast, studies that analyze inequalities based on religion, disabilities, and race in relation to ES are least common. Finally, experience is the least explored benefit in relation to inequality, potentially due to the challenges of assessing intangible benefits. This review also highlights the complexities of inequalities acting at different scales and potential trade-offs between inequality categories and ecosystem benefit types. Future research recommendations include further widening the inequality lens (primarily in the cultural and social dimensions) to improve our understanding of who benefits from nature to develop more effective, sustainable, and equitable policies and mitigate future threats.

Våtmarker förser oss människor med ett stort antal viktiga ekosystemtjänster, såsom vattenrening, vattenreglering, klimatreglering och rekreation. Delvis eftersom många våtmarker försvunnit och försämrats i Sverige under drygt de senaste hundra åren finns ett behov av att restaurera och anlägga våtmarker. Ekosystemtjänsternas värde uttrycks vanligtvis inte på marknaden, och restaureringstakten är för låg. Ett möjligt sätt att hantera detta är att värdera våtmarkers ekosystemtjänster ekonomiskt. Syftet med denna rapport är att utreda hur ekosystemtjänster och de värden de genererar synliggörs och påverkar beslut kring restaurering och anläggning av våtmarker i Sverige. Detta har uppnåtts genom att intervjua tre personer som varit inblandade i restaurering eller anläggning av våtmarker, samt att sammanställa syften som angetts för projekt inom bidragssystemet LONA våtmark. Resultatet visar att förbättring till tillgången till flera olika ekosystemtjänster eftersträvas, bland annat utjämning av vattenflöden, minskning av näringsämnen och rekreation. Våtmarkers ekosystemtjänster har dock sällan värderats och deras värden lyfts inte fram i någon större utsträckning. Hur värdering av ekosystemtjänster skulle kunna användas i större utsträckning vid restaurering och anläggning av våtmarker diskuteras också. / Wetlands provide us humans with a large number of important ecosystem services, such as water purification, water regulation, climate regulation and recreation. Partly because many wetlands have disappeared and deteriorated from Sweden for just over the last hundred years, there is a need to restore and build wetlands. The value of ecosystem services is usually not expressed in the market, and the rate of restoration is too low. One possible way to handle this is to evaluate wetland ecosystem services economically. The purpose of this report is to investigate how ecosystem services and the values they generate are made visible and influence decisions regarding the restoration and construction of wetlands in Sweden. This has been achieved by interviewing three people who have been involved in the restoration or construction of wetlands, as well as compiling objectives stated for projects within the LONA wetland grant system. The results show that improvement in access to several different ecosystem services is sought, including equalization of water flows, reduction of nutrients and recreation. However, wetland ecosystem services have rarely been evaluated and their values are not highlighted to any great extent. How valuation of ecosystem services could be used to a greater extent in the restoration and construction of wetlands is also discussed.

Nature based sports and outdoor recreation activities are much appreciated, but continued densification in urban and peri-urban areas may reduce future opportunities to take part in such activities in a desirable way. To be able to consider the needs of these activities, in relation to other competing land use interests, it is essential to understand why people engage in the activities and how the nature landscape contributes and is used. The aim of this degree project is, therefore, to investigate motives and preferences among participants in various nature based activities, and to describe the role of nature and the participants’ relation to the nature landscape. While many previous studies have targeted recreational activities, where participation traditionally is non-competitive and focused on wellbeing, this study mainly targets nature based sports, where activities, in general, are more physical and result-oriented. The study has a descriptive approach where Rudan, a nature reserve in southern Stockholm, is used as a case study. There, data was primarily collected through a questionnaire (N=64), distributed among members of sport clubs in Rudan as well as among visitors on site. Responses were then analysed through cross-tabulations. The results indicate that people have varying, and often several, motives for taking part in their activities and for performing their activities in a particular setting. The results also show that the nature landscape, and the characteristics it holds, has an important role to play in many aspects; it can be a driver of motivation, a stage for the activity, and a generator of human benefits. The relatively small sample size does, however, affect the accuracy of the study, and more research is needed to get a comprehensive understanding. Nevertheless, the findings can be used to raise awareness and communicate the value of nature in nature based sports and outdoor recreation activities. Recognising nature’s multiple roles and values for participants in such activities will be necessary when analysing potential effects of future development plans or interventions in the peri-urban nature landscape. / Utomhusidrott och friluftsliv utgör uppskattade inslag i många människors vardag, men med fortsatt förtätning i städer och i stadsnära grönområden riskerar de framtida möjligheterna att delta i sådana aktiviteter att försämras. För att möta dessa aktiviteters behov, framförallt då de utsätts för konkurrens av andra samhällsintressen, är det nödvändigt att förstå grunderna för deltagande i sådana utomhusaktiviteter, samt hur naturlandskapet används och bidrar till upplevelsen. Syftet med detta examensarbete är därför att undersöka motiv och preferenser bland deltagare i olika naturrelaterade idrotts- och friluftsaktiviteter, och att därutöver beskriva naturens roll och deltagarnas relation till naturlandskapet. Då många tidigare studier har fokuserat på friluftsliv, där deltagande traditionellt sett är inriktat på rekreation och välmående, vänder sig denna studie främst mot idrottsaktiviteter, där deltagande i allmänhet är mer fysiskt och resultatinriktat. Studien har ett beskrivande tillvägagångssätt där Rudan, ett naturreservat i södra Stockholm, används som fallstudie. Flera metoder har använts, men data har främst inhämtats genom en enkätundersökning (N = 64) som besvarades av medlemmar i idrottsföreningar i Rudan samt av besökare på plats. Svaren analyserades sedan med hjälp av pivottabeller. Resultaten visar att det finns olika, och ofta flera, motiv för att delta i aktiviteterna och för att utföra aktiviteterna i ett visst område. Resultaten visar även att naturlandskapet har en viktig roll, sett ur många aspekter. Det kan vara en motiverande faktor, en arena för aktiviteten och bidra till många övriga mervärden. Då antalet respondenter i studien var relativt lågt är studiens resultat dock något osäkert, och mer omfattande undersökningar behövs för att skapa tydligare förståelse. Trots det kan resultaten i studien användas för att öka medvetenheten och tydliggöra naturens värde inom utomhusidrott och friluftsliv. Naturens många olika värden och roller för idrotts- och friluftslivsutövare bör sedan beaktas inom samhällsplaneringen i stort och vid framtida utveckling av stadsnära natur- och rekreationsområden.

Nature's non-material contributions to people are difficult to quantify and one aspect in particular, nature's contributions to communication (NCC), has so far been neglected. Recent advances in automated language processing tools enable us to quantify diversity patterns underlying the distribution of plant and animal taxon labels in creative literature, which we term BiL (biodiversity in literature). We assume BiL to provide a proxy for people's openness to nature's non-material contributions enhancing our understanding of NCC. We assembled a comprehensive list of 240,000 English biological taxon labels. We pre-processed and searched a subcorpus of digitised literature on Project Gutenberg for these labels. We quantified changes in biodiversity indices commonly used in ecological studies for 16,000 books, encompassing 4,000 authors, as proxies for BiL between 1705 and 1969. We observed hump-shape patterns for taxon label richness, abundance and Shannon diversity indicating a peak of BiL in the middle of the 19th century. This is also true for the ratio of biological to general lexical richness. The variation in label use between different sections within books, quantified as β-diversity, declined until the 1830s and recovered little, indicating a less specialised use of taxon labels over time. This pattern corroborates our hypothesis that before the onset of industrialisation BiL may have increased, reflecting several concomitant influences such as the general broadening of literary content, improved education and possibly an intensified awareness of the starting loss of biodiversity during the period of romanticism. Given that these positive trends continued and that we do not find support for alternative processes reducing BiL, such as language streamlining, we suggest that this pronounced trend reversal and subsequent decline of BiL over more than 100 years may be the consequence of humans’ increasing alienation from nature owing to major societal changes in the wake of industrialisation. We conclude that our computational approach of analysing literary communication using biodiversity indices has a high potential for understanding aspects of non-material contributions of biodiversity to people. Our approach can be applied to other corpora and would benefit from additional metadata on taxa, works and authors.

This thesis makes the connection between urban agriculture and a specific suite of ecosystem services and lays out a typology and toolkit for planners to take advantage of these ecosystem services. The services investigated here are: food production, water management, soil health, biodiversity, climate mitigation, and community development benefits. Research from a variety of fields was aggregated and synthesized to prove that urban agriculture can be beneficial for human as well as environmental health. A set of urban agriculture typologies was generated to illustrate best practices to maximize a particular set of ecosystem services. The typologies are: production farm, stormwater garden, soil-building garden, habitat garden, climate mitigation farm, cultural/educational garden, and ecosystem garden. Each typology was paired with a precedent study to demonstrate how that typology might be realized in the real world. Finally, a toolkit for planners was assembled to demonstrate some tools and techniques that planners might use to implement urban agriculture as a strategy for providing ecosystem services. Planners can utilize the toolkit to insert themselves into the urban ecosystem at multiple scales in a creative way to apply best practices and urban agriculture typologies in order to take advantage of the multiple benefits of urban agriculture.

The global mean temperature is continuously increasing despite of the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping it from rising more than 1.5-2°C above pre-industrial levels. Cities are the main contributors to the increasing temperature as they emit more than 70% of total global CO2 emissions. Therefore, it is important to achieve net-zero emissions in cities to stop temperature from increasing further. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) have proven to be a cost-effective strategy to reduce CO2 emissions in urban environments (by up to 25%). Research needs to be conducted on how NbS should be incorporated into policy for them to have the best effects and desired outcomes. This thesis explores how NbS can be effectively implemented in environmental policies to reach set goals and achieve desired effects. It aims to explore factors in the Stockholm Royal Seaport (SRS) environmental policy that can strengthen and constrain the implementation of NbS. The intention of this thesis is also to learn how this area’s policy affects the collaboration between stakeholders, including residents, in this area. The research questions of this thesis are: (1) What are the environmental policies related to Nature-based Solutions used by Stockholm Royal Seaport to achieve climate positivity and strengthen ecosystem services? (2) What key factors in the environmental policies in Stockholm Royal Seaport can be identified as supporting or constraining the implementation of Nature-based Solutions? (3) How do the environmental policies in Stockholm Royal Seaport affect the collaboration among stakeholders in this area? A case study on SRS is conducted to answer these questions. The data is collected from this area’s latest steering document and sustainability report, and interviews. Thematic analysis is used to analyse the collected data. The results from the exploratory research are that SRS’s policies presented in goal four of the steering document, such as the promotion of blue and green infrastructure, positively affect the NbS used in this area to strengthen ecosystem services. However, these solutions are not explicitly identified as strategies to achieve climate positivity. Two key factors that support implementing NbS in SRS have been identified. The first is the requirement for developments to follow the stormwater management strategy and the Green Space Index. Second is the encouragement of collaboration between stakeholders. Three key constraining factors identified are: 1) the lack of definition and communication of the NbS strategies, and the reason for implementing them; 2) the lack of mention and explanation of NbS in the steering document; 3) limiting budgets. The policy in SRS is highly focused on, and encourages, collaboration and knowledge development between stakeholders, therefore, it is concluded that this area’s policy has a positive effect on this policy aspect and contributes to increasing collaboration.

The aim of this study is to examine the public preferences for urban riparian corridors in arid ‎regions, by testing to what extent people are willing to trade-off unmaintained ecological ‎landscape for aesthetics offered by specific micro and ‎macro environmental factors. Landscape ‎design reflects ecological and aesthetic values, and trade-offs are often made ‎between the two in ‎‎practice. In arid regions, water scarcity means riparian corridors are the ‎richest landscape ‎typology and the only ‎blue-green links for hundreds of miles. Pressure from ‎urbanization and ‎lack of eco-literacy contribute to negative ‎feedback loops which present dire ‎challenges for ‎migrating avifauna and regional wildlife. Regarding natural ‎resources and ‎biodiversity, where ‎multiple deliverable ‎ecosystem services rely on the quality and health of that ‎‎ecosystem, riparian ‎systems with high biomass are more desirable. Although this can be ‎achieved with low or no ‎‎maintenance riparian buffers, these unmaintained ecological landscapes ‎play an intrinsic role in ‎sustaining the ‎global ecosystem services and are important for the survival of the inhabitants ‎‎(avifauna). Ecological ‎landscapes are often subjected to trade-offs with aesthetic ‎landscapes that ‎include micro and ‎macro environmental factors such as manicured landscapes. It is accepted that ‎‎there is a ‎preference for aesthetics in landscape design; however, it is unclear how laypeople ‎prioritize ‎aesthetics ‎over different ecological factors in landscape scenes. This study uses a ‎Discrete Choice ‎Experiment (DCE) to elicit the ‎preferences of current or pretendant residents of ‎Jeddah City, Saudi Arabia for multiple landscape scenes. The method ‎combines ecological ‎landscape characteristics adopted from ‎the QBR index that are found in the study area in Jeddah ‎and aesthetic ‎characteristics, such as micro and macro environmental factors that are commonly ‎suggested in landscape design projects adapted from relevant visual preference studies (Alsaiari, ‎‎2018; Kenwick et al., 2009; Kuper‎ ‎,‎2017; Zhao et al., 2017). ‎DCE is a widely used method to ‎reveal preferences by analyzing the trade-offs people make ‎between ‎alternatives. Participants in ‎this study were exposed to a set of designs, which included ‎various configurations of ‎aesthetic ‎and ecological elements. Participants' choices revealed the influence of their ecological and ‎‎aesthetic values. Results show that minimal design interventions would prevent trading off the ‎ecological unmaintained landscape and that there are four subgroups with distinct homogeneous ‎preferences for the attributes affecting the appeal for the urban riparian corridor in Jeddah City. ‎Finally, results show that even though there are significant differences between subgroups based ‎on preferences, the demographic information is proportionally distributed in a way the means ‎differences diminish between the subgroups. ‎Findings in this study will equip ‎decision-makers ‎with operational definitions relating to riparian ‎landscape design and a method ‎that they can use ‎to minimize losses in ecological value over aesthetic value. This study will help‎ ‎researchers and ‎landscape architects advance visual preference research further into the domain ‎of empirical ‎‎studies.‎ ‎ / Doctor of Philosophy / Landscape architecture is a profession that entails planning and design outdoor spaces, ‎‎landmarks, and ‎structures to improve the built environment and increasing the quality of ‎‎people's lives by achieving ‎environmental, social, economic, and aesthetic outcomes‎. The ‎profession often reflects ecological and ‎aesthetic values, and trade-offs are often made ‎between ‎the two in ‎practice. These ecological values ‎represent environmental characteristics that are ‎important for the survival of wildlife (protected path ‎and safe habitat) and the overall ecosystem ‎‎(every being has a role that sustain the health of the ‎environment). Culturally, human is ‎accustomed to a slick-and-clean (tamped) looking plant within urban ‎developments (i.e., ‎neighborhoods). An example of the trade-off that often happen in practice between ‎the ‎ecological and aesthetic values is replacing an ecologically unmaintained plants that play ‎important ‎ecological role (i.e., wildlife habitat) with clean tamped plants to increase the value of ‎a real estate. Due ‎to the uncertainty surrounding people's acceptance of the features of these ‎ecological unmaintained ‎plants, especially when it entails introducing ecological riparian ‎landscape attributes within ‎neighborhoods for the first time, this dissertation focuses on both ‎assessing ecological elements ‎preferences within an urban arid region in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia ‎and assessing the extent to which ‎advanced analytical methods are capable of providing a better ‎understanding of ecological riparian ‎landscape attributes preference differences among a ‎seemingly homogenous sample of participants. ‎The increasing usage of manipulated images in ‎choice tasks inspired this dissertation. The results of the ‎study demonstrate that among the ‎relatively homogenous sample of participants that was recruited, ‎four significant preference ‎patterns have emerged, which could be used to describe and predict ‎preference for ecological ‎riparian landscape attributes and choice with great accuracy. The dissertation ‎also investigates ‎policy implications that might be beneficial in creating a ‎physical environment that ‎match public ‎preferences. ‎It also offers research implications and recommendations for landscape ‎architects ‎and urban designers on how to employ visual choice experiments, which have been well-‎‎developed in other research field