Well-being and the use of ecosystem services by rural households of the Río Cruces watershed, southern Chile

Abstract

© 2016 Elsevier B.V. The main objective of this article is to analyse the relationship between human well-being (HWB) and ecosystem services (ES). We studied the Río Cruces watershed (Chile) as a social-ecological system by means of a social survey and compared the results with those previously obtained at the Aysén watershed. We surveyed six localities characterized by different types of habitat. HWB was assessed by means of two indicators (material conditions and quality of life) and ES through the analysis of provisioning and regulating services. Results for Río Cruces show no significant HWB differences between localities, with the exception of life satisfaction (lower on isolated localities). The use of provisioning and regulating services did not differ between localities, with the exception of two components (wood and soil fertility), and we only found a significant positive correlation between regulating services and HWB material conditions. The comparison between watersheds sh