Rivers are not simply bodies of water; they are complex socio-ecological systems that provide a wide range of ecosystem services (ES) to people (Hanna et al. 2018), which are essential for social well-being (Vallecillo et al. 2018). These services include material resources, species habitats, freshwater supply and flood control (Grizzetti et al. 2016), as well as intangible benefits that satisfy the social, spiritual and recreational needs of local communities (Riechers et al. 2018), making them particularly valuable in urban areas where green spaces and blue infrastructure are often limited. However, urban rivers face human activities associated with the processes of urbanisation, leading to continuous modification of the landscape. These processes have a significant impact on the functional diversity of river ecosystems, reducing their capacity to provide ES.

These anthropogenic pressures are particularly exacerbated in the context of developing cities in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) Region (International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) 2016). Despite their high biodiversity and a high degree of endemism, these water bodies face additional stress factors (Tellman et al. 2018, Walteros and Ramírez 2020), mainly due to accelerated urban expansion (NU, CEPAL 2022), alongside practices such as the discharge of contaminated water, channelling works and loss of riparian vegetation. These factors have contributed to the transformation of water ecosystems, shifting from multifunctional and resilient landscapes to monofunctional channels and open sewers (da Cruz e Sousa and Ríos-Touma 2018, Walteros and Ramírez 2020).

These challenges are further compounded by the effects of the climatic emergency, which intensifies the vulnerability of urban rivers (Jiang et al. 2018). Hydrological events, such as floods, have been observed to occur more frequently in areas where rivers have experienced a significant loss of their natural characteristics essential for resilience and mitigation of impacts (Sabater et al. 2018).

Consequently, many urban rivers have become degraded and at risk, with consequences not only for their ecological dimensions, but also for the quality of life of residents. The loss of ecosystem services and anthropogenic pressures generate various negative impacts, such as areas perceived as unpleasant and unsafe due to the presence of waste, unpleasant odours, lack of lighting, fear of crime and inadequate infrastructure, amongst other aspects that affect people's well-being. These aspects have been studied as ecosystem disservices (Shapiro and Báldi 2014, von Döhren and Haase 2015, Rodríguez-Morales et al. 2020, Montes-Pulido and Forero 2021). These negative social perceptions can pose a direct threat to the intrinsic social value of urban river landscapes, which, in turn, could perpetuate aggressive and polluting practices in these coupled socioecological systems (Pascual et al. 2017, Gottwald and Stedman 2020). However, considering these impacts contributes to an integrative framework that enables effective addressing of current challenges in landscape management (Lyytimäki 2015).

For this reason, several researchers emphasise the need to focus attention on the social values and importance that a local community assigns to a given landscape and its ES (Arias-Arévalo et al. 2017, Chen et al. 2017, Rey-Valette et al. 2017, Pascual et al. 2017). However, this category of analysis of ES remains limited compared to the biophysical and economic approaches traditionally used to assess and analyse water bodies (Nedkov et al. 2015, Garcia-Rodrigues et al. 2017, Karimi et al. 2020, Kaiser et al. 2021). Additionally, the scientific literature on ecosystem services has primarily focused on provisioning and regulating services, rather than intangible services, such as recreation and aesthetic values (Hanna et al. 2018, Cheng et al. 2019). This trend can be attributed to the challenge of quantifying cultural services in monetary terms due to their intangible nature. However, overlooking the social dimension, subjective values and cultural benefits of ecosystems (Chan et al. 2012, Plieninger et al. 2015, Ruiz-Frau et al. 2017) leads to incomplete assessments that undermine the inherent pluralistic nature of the concept of ecosystem services.

Therefore, a closer look at the socio-cultural valuation of ES and the landscape provides a crucial perspective to identify and recognise social preferences and areas of particular interest to the community. In the context of altered and degraded ecosystems, these perceptions can have positive or negative connotations. Thus, considering diverse ecosystem values expands the possibilities to identify opportunities and conflicts in the same territory (Reyers et al. 2013, Polizzi et al. 2015), facilitating the identification of management priorities with greater acceptance and social support. These aspects can only be captured through participatory and community-based approaches (Nijnik and Miller 2017, Himes and Muraca 2018), enabling the challenge of traditional visions and prevailing power asymmetries in planning to be addressed.

In this sense, participatory mapping has been applied as an effective tool to collect data from multiple social agents and integrate it with ecological information to reveal socio-environmental relationships and their spatial association (van Riper et al. 2012, Rey-Valette et al. 2017), which allows establishing a dialogue with the actors and, thus, knowing their preferences about the landscape (Alvarado-Arias 2021).

This research aims to assess and map the socio-cultural, non-monetary, positive and negative values of the Zamora and Malacatos Rivers and the ES, in their course through the urban-rural gradient in Loja City, Ecuador. With this, it is possible to identify and know the relative importance of the social value and identify its explicit spatial distribution, patterns and ES hotspot from the mapped preferences.

Finally, this research achieves several contributions: (1) It provides an ES case study in a city from the Global South, in a field where most studies have focused on landscapes and social values within the Global North (Dobbs et al. 2018, Escobedo et al. 2019); (2) It contributes to closing the knowledge gap by enquiring about ES in urban areas since previous works have been applied mainly over large scales in national parks and rural areas and the studies that approach urban environments tend to evaluate specific areas like parks (Palomo et al. 2014, Sun et al. 2019), leaving ES patterns at the city scale largely unknown (Kremer et al. 2015, Rall et al. 2017); (3) Finally, this study contributes to the limited representation of the negative values of the ecosystems, also known as disservices (Blanco et al. 2019, Baumeister et al. 2022), which are more relevant in the context of the anthropogenised landscape.

The findings offer valuable insights into stakeholder preferences for the riverscape, thereby facilitating their incorporation into planning and management processes.

Study area

Survey data, participatory mapping and social variables: OpinaRíos

Environmental data

SolVES model

Socio-demographic characteristics and social preferences

Spatial distribution and model results

Environmental variables

Positive (PSV) and Negative (NSV) Social Values Maps

Based on participatory mapping in combination with biophysical data from Loja City, we generated spatially-explicit indicators of social value for each ES and disservice studied.

In general, we found that the ten social values studied received a variety of scores (Table 4), results similar to those found by Larson et al. (2016), Ives et al. (2017), Sun et al. (2019); this plurality of values associated with rivers and their ES indicates that they are perceived in a complex way; consequently, multiple valuations (socio-cultural, biophysical and monetary) need to be considered, which requires transdisciplinary dialogue, as highlighted by Martín-López et al. (2014). We also found different preferences amongst each of the rivers studied; fewer negative locations were recorded for the Zamora River, which is related to the "regular" rating assigned regarding the condition of its fluvial landscape, while Malacatos received a "bad" rating. This means that the community has a worse perception of the Malacatos River, which could be per the anthropogenic condition (highly altered urban river ecosystem) it presents, this coinciding with the idea that the waterscapes' context influences the type of preference (Herzog 1985).

Specific scores and spatial patterns were also revealed for the ESs studied, where mapping negative values indicate that locations closer to the city centre were more strongly chosen compared to places further away. Hence, they were clustered in a smaller section, while the positive hotspots showed greater dispersion.

In addition, a total of 381 location points for NSV and 267 for PSV were collected for the survey (Table 3). This reveals that the respondents showed a greater interest in mapping and identifying negative locations than positive ones, which could be explained given the conditions presented by anthropogenised ecosystems (Campagne et al. 2019), as is the case of the urban rivers studied. The foregoing could also denote that the community is not only conscious and perceives, but can also identify, several of the effects of landscape degradation (Lyytimäki 2015), such as lack of vegetation, pollution, bad odours, garbage, insecurity etc. (Larson et al. 2016, Campagne et al. 2019) and subsequently locate it on a map. Descriptions that, according to authors such as Chapin III et al. (2000), also represent the loss of ES and that together could have influenced the perceptions of evaluation, justifying that there is a greater interest in the negative aspects. In this sense, the highest score was "Unpleasantness" (Max-VI = 10), also more mapped points (n = 121), which suggests that it is the main social perception.

Concerning PSV maps, we observed similar patterns with an emphasis on Aesthetic and Recreation values. Previous research suggested these two Social Values are important indicators of how people connect with nature (Brown and Raymond 2014).

"Learning" corresponds to the highest PSV (7/10) (Table 3), meaning that the community primarily views rivers as providers of educational benefits. This finding is unusual compared to similar studies, where the "Aesthetic" benefit is typically valued more (Sherrouse et al. 2014, Sun et al. 2019) and, moreover, the value attributed to "Learning" tends to have a lower representation and score in many instances (Johnson et al. 2019).

The most valued places mapped were in peripheral areas, but in a scattered way, covering a larger area of the city. Therefore, these hotspots should be considered priority intervention areas due to their ability to provide ES and contribute to the well-being of the community (Martín-López et al. 2012).

The "El Carmen" peripheral neighbourhood was one of them; it corresponds to a territory close to the rural sector that appears on most PSV maps (Fig. 4), mainly on maps of Aesthetics and Learning Values. The previous statement means that respondents consider the area like an interesting place, maybe because of the natural conditions it still preserves; in addition, there are two tributaries of the Zamora River nearby, along with being one of the access roads to the Podocarpus Protected Area. It is also interesting to note that there are no NSV groups for this peripheral area. Therefore, social preferences for this place are only positive, reinforcing the idea that open and riverside areas are valued more in an urban context (Deason et al. 2010, Garcia and Pargament 2015).

In all SVs maps, we notice how the rivers and the surroundings of the parks and squares were outlined by the intensity and the grouping of the points. The previous statement is evident in the areas with a high-Value Index, which appeared very close to green areas of the city, such as: “Zamora Huayco” Linear Park, “La Tebaida” Linear Park, “Jipir” Recreational Park and Zoo. These places are likely to have less anthropogenic conditions that support the sense of place, as well as offer recreational opportunities (Gobster et al. 2007, Martín-López et al. 2012) and, as shown in Table 4, the variable related to the distance to the areas green (DTGA) was the most influential for all models. Other research, although not using the metric in model development, found that the high-priority locations marked by respondents were around urban green spaces (van Riper et al. 2012, Sun et al. 2019).

The importance of considering the role of green areas in perceptions of the urban ecosystem is not only because they provide benefits, but also because their uneven distribution can affect the provision of ES throughout the city, increasing spatial injustice.

Regarding the sites where the spatial distribution of locations with high PSV and high NSV coincides, we found that the urban centre, in general, obtained a high representation in all result maps. The main area of spatial clustering was located at the architectural landmark called 'Puerta de la Ciudad' (City Gate) (Fig. 1b), which corresponds to the confluence area of both rivers and is where the Malacatos River begins its canalisation, thus offering an altered and homogeneous landscape. In this same area, the Zamora River lacks adequate pedestrian infrastructure (Fig. 2b), conditions that have contributed to negative perceptions of it as an unpleasant and unsafe place and an increased risk of floods. The latter is due to the fact that the area is prone to overflowing.

However, around this ''Puerta de la Ciudad'' landmark, the area with the highest urban density is established, making it a highly frequented public place by its inhabitants. For this reason, it can evoke a high sense of historical, heritage and educative significance at the same time as feelings of concern (McCormick et al. 2015). This suggests that the social perception of ES can vary and that the same landscape can provide a series of different meanings, feelings and values (Milcu et al. 2013, Martín-López et al. 2014). Therefore, it corresponds to a section where different and opposing social values converge. This finding also appears in similar studies (Rodríguez-Morales et al. 2020, Baumeister et al. 2022), which emphasise the non-exclusive nature of ecosystem services and disservices, highlighting the importance of considering and examining both types of ES (Schaubroeck 2017), especially in studies on anthropogenised landscapes. In this sense, our research resolves that, in urban ecosystems, such as rivers, positive and negative social valuations can co-exist in the same place.

The findings of our study offer useful information to identify and establish priority areas for intervention concerning the conditions of the riverscape, where the most valued places can be considered a high priority due to their ability to provide benefits to citizens and represent significant places. In contrast, the negative places need to be recovered. The highest values in both types of ES also deserve special attention; for example, the social value of "learning" highlights the community's interest in environmental education spaces and activities centred around rivers. Conversely, the perception of "unpleasantness" towards the rivers emphasises the urgent need to restore and improve their aesthetic and environmental quality, aspects that urban planners should consider. Excessive anthropogenisation has significantly impacted the natural landscape value of the rivers, which is missed and needed by the community.

Challenges and Opportunities

The mapping methodology focused on PPGIS used in this study employed a web-based survey, ESRI Survey123, which was disseminated in situ through a QR code and URL distribution, to capture social preferences of the landscape and georeference them in real-time, without depending on the place and time, thus avoiding the manual digitisation process of data points. It proved to be a user-friendly platform, reaching the 40 - 65 age group as the most participatory. However, surveyors needed to have a good knowledge of the city and the ability to locate places on a map.

SolVES and Maxent tools were successfully used to analyse, quantify and map the social value of ESs and our study demonstrated the utility and flexibility of PPGIS, capturing tangible and intangible insights and facilitating the provision of indices and maps that can provide information for landscape planning and management processes. To the authors' knowledge, this corresponds to the first application of the SolVES model in Ecuador and the third in the LAC region. Furthermore, their portability as open-source software is noteworthy. However, these tools require advanced technical knowledge and detailed cartographic information of the study area (vectorial and raster). These aspects could limit their application in contexts where technical and human resources are limited. Our study demonstrated the utility and flexibility of Public Participation GIS for capturing tangible and intangible information and facilitating the provision of indices and maps that can provide information for landscape planning.

On the other hand, the application of urban ecosystem services mapping, based on social valuation, promotes a participatory approach to the management and planning of socio-ecological landscapes. This approach establishes a dialogue with the local community to understand their perception and interaction with the river landscape, as well as to identify places of perceived importance. This information can be complemented by evaluations focused on the material and monetary services of the ecosystem, as well as with expert opinions (Villa et al. 2014); in this way, it is possible to obtain an integral evaluation.

This study assessed and mapped the socio-cultural, non-monetary, positive and negative values of the rivers and their ES in Loja City, Ecuador. The metrics, indices and cartographies obtained contributed to the development of a pluralism of values by representing socio-cultural preferences, recognising the multiple benefits and disservices offered by the fluvial urban landscape and mapping areas with a greater or lesser supply of ES, providing a useful guide to sustainability landscape planning. The latter suggests that social values play an essential role in drawing new structural and subjective routes in managing and planning degraded urban rivers. It is validated since it directly recognises how and where the community perceives the ESs landscape, facilitating local knowledge integration towards informed management and decision acceptance. In this respect, we encourage researchers and decision-makers to pay more attention to the role of social assessment in the framework of ES, emphasising the global south, where information is insufficient and pressures on the urban riverscape will continue to increase.

We appreciate all the respondents who shared their perspectives in support of this research. Thanks to Benson Sherrouse (USGS) for his help.

Conceptualisation, methodology, software, investigation, writing—original draft preparation, writing—review and editing, N.A.A., V.M.A. and F.C.T.; validation, resources, data curation, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition, N.A.A. and V.M.A.; formal analysis, visualisation, N.A.A., V.M.A. and F.C.T; N.A.A., V.M.A., F.C.T and A.M.E. resources. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.