Prototype digital twin: recreation and biodiversity cultural ecosystem services

•Digital twin approaches have the potential to revolutionise usage, planning and management of cultural ecosystem services i.e. the non-material benefits people obtain from ecosystems, including recreation, tourism, intellectual development, spiritual enrichment, reflection and aesthetic experiences.

•Here, we outline our blueprint for a prototype digital twin (pDT) for cultural ecosystem services. The pDT consists of two modelling components; a recreation potential model to quantify the cultural ecosystem services of the physical landscape and species distribution models to quantify the biodiversity component.

•It is envisaged that the digital twin will be used primarily by two user types: 1. those who wanted to enjoy the area and potentially contribute to citizen science programmes and 2. people who want to inform or make evidence-based management decisions (land managers, policy-makers, researchers).