2025/06/11 by Anabela Paula, Fernando Pulido, Albano Figueiredo +1 · 1 voice
Environmental Science · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Land Use and Ecosystem Services #Urban Agriculture and Sustainability #Soil and Land Suitability Analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.3897/oneeco.10.e145448
openalex publication_date 2025/06/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26
The diverse historical and traditional uses associated with wild edible plants (WEP) and wild edible mushrooms (WEM) make them good examples of natural resources related to both provisioning and cultural ecosystem services (ES). However, the study and mapping of these resources under the ES framework remain unclear. This systematic review aims to fill this gap and identify the methodologies used to study these resources. It also intends to understand whether foraging has reported negative impacts and whether sustainable practices are being adopted. The research question was based on the PEO framework (Population, Exposure, Outcome), and the search followed the PRISMA protocol. The review was based on the 42 articles that met the defined inclusion criteria. The in-depth analysis of each study assessed how the ES framework was approached and whether there was any associated mapping. Whenever benefits associated with WEP&M were described, they were categorised according to the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (v.5.1) and five provisioning and eleven cultural ES were associated with these wild resources. However, half of the studies only acknowledge its importance as ES without discussing it within the ES framework and only four studies mentioned ES classification systems. Some impacts regarding foraging activity were identified, although most studies listed sustainable practices and did not consider foraging a threat to species conservation.