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Lawns have a significant influence on the cityscape as one of the essential elements of green spaces and an important part of people's everyday lives. Most people in the Western world view lawns as a compulsory element of the urban landscape, almost an icon, without questioning their social, symbolic, ecological or aesthetic values. This research is a part of the conceptual framework and methodological approaches that are being used in an ongoing transdisciplinary collaboration project to study lawns in Sweden as a social and ecological phenomenon.The overall aim of this study was to investigate social and cultural perceptions of lawns, as well as motives behind decisions about the establishment and management of lawns in Sweden. Two multifamily housing typologies, the 'Million Programme' and People's Homes', were examined due to their dominance in Swedish cities. We also studied how an alternative vision of conventional lawns can be applied and accepted by urban residents. We estimated lawn cover in multi-family housing areas and links to people's perception and use of lawns. Questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and observational studies were used (N = 300). Our results showed that people like lawns even if they do not always directly use them. Lawns cover the most significant amount of outdoor spaces in all multi-family residential areas and accompany people everywhere from the house to the schoolyard or park. The total lawn cover in the study areas was 27.8%. Lawns were particularly valued as important places for different outdoor activities (playing, resting, picnicking, walking, socialising) and enjoying the green colour. However people do not want to use a vast monotonous lawn, but a variety of spaces that provide good conditions for different senses (sound, smell, touch and sight) and activities. Alternative lawns were also appreciated by many citizens, politicians, planners and managers. The implementation of new types of lawns requires special planning and design solutions adjusted for each particular neighbourhood.

Ecological compensation (EC) has been proposed as an important tool for stopping the loss of biodiversity and natural values. However, there are few studies on its actual operationalisation and there is high uncertainty about how it should be designed and implemented to be an effective way of performing nature conservation. In this study we focus on ecological compensation in Sweden, a country where it is in the process of being implemented more broadly. Using interviews and a workshop we investigate how the work with the implementation is carried out and what challenges exist. The results show that implementation of EC is at an early stage of development and there are many practical obstacles, linked to both legislation and routines in the planning processes. There is a lack of holistic perspective and large-scale thinking, a quite strong focus on a small number of individual species, and an overall attitude that anything is better than nothing, all of which can have negative consequences for biodiversity conservation overall. Based on the results we discuss the need for better integration of EC into the entire decision-making process and for a holistic approach to preservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services, by increasing the focus on landscape perspective and considering delays in compensation outcomes. There is also a need for a national level standard for EC, making good and worse examples of compensation measures available and systematic monitoring of EC projects. Finally, a spatially explicit database to document all EC areas should be introduced both to ensure consistency in protection from future development plans and to enable long-term monitoring of EC outcomes.

Ecological compensation (EC) has been proposed as an important tool for stopping the loss of biodiversity and natural values. However, there are few studies on its actual operationalisation and there is high uncertainty about how it should be designed and implemented to be an effective way of performing nature conservation. In this study we focus on ecological compensation in Sweden, a country where it is in the process of being implemented more broadly. Using interviews and a workshop we investigate how the work with the implementation is carried out and what challenges exist. The results show that implementation of EC is at an early stage of development and there are many practical obstacles, linked to both legislation and routines in the planning processes. There is a lack of holistic perspective and large-scale thinking, a quite strong focus on a small number of individual species, and an overall attitude that anything is better than nothing, all of which can have negative consequences for biodiversity conservation overall. Based on the results we discuss the need for better integration of EC into the entire decision-making process and for a holistic approach to preservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services, by increasing the focus on landscape perspective and considering delays in compensation outcomes. There is also a need for a national level standard for EC, making good and worse examples of compensation measures available and systematic monitoring of EC projects. Finally, a spatially explicit database to document all EC areas should be introduced both to ensure consistency in protection from future development plans and to enable long-term monitoring of EC outcomes. ; These authors contributed equally to this work: Malgorzata Blicharska and Lina A. Widenfalk

Key words: Monitoring, perception, indicators Globally, land-use and climate change has resulted in a number of landscape transformations. At the same time, how humans use and perceive landscapes has changed and is changing. People's landscape perception depends on many different factors such as gender, age, sense of place, ownership and actual land-use interest. Despite the growing number of studies suggesting that certain biophysical landscape properties are perceived by humans in similar ways, independently of cultural background and personal preferences, few studies have determined the interactions between sense of place, demography and preferences for these landscape properties. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential of linking perceived landscape features to biophysical landscape property data sampled in the NILS (National Inventory of Landscapes in Sweden) monitoring program. "Features" are e.g. descriptions of perceived things such as an open landscape and "properties" are measured field data such as cover of spruce. In doing that we aim at enabling the use of monitoring data as a proxy for evaluate landscape perception changes over time. We used the Swedish national environmental objectives as a framework policy, since those objectives include targets that are linked to landscape perception. So far, however, no indicators have been defined to follow them up. We collected information on how people with a professional background linked to mountain areas, such as officials at governmental organisations and business companies, perceive the Swedish mountains. In an enquiry the respondent's rated pre-defined attributes linked to perceptions of mountain landscapes, as well as described the perceptions with their own words. The output data were later subjectively linked to physical landscape properties monitored in the NILS program. The landscape feature primarily associated to Swedish mountains were "view", "openness" and "open landscapes", whereas "spruce" and "pine" that contradict openness were much lower rated. We suggest that by assessing physical landscape properties using monitoring data, it is possible to evaluate people's potentially positive or negative perceptions of landscapes, as well as changes in perceptions that may occur when the landscape change. These linkages could be used to evaluate the potential of a landscape to provide restoratives or aesthetical values of landscapes over time. Results from the evaluations could also be used for guiding landscape management to increase certain perception values and address negative impacts of land-use decisions on other values. ; peerReviewed