scholarly journals A Design for Addressing Multiple Ecosystem Services in Forest Management Planning

Forests ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1108
Author(s):  
Emin Zeki Baskent ◽  
José Guilherme Borges ◽  
Jan Kašpar ◽  
Meryem Tahri

Forest policy and decision-makers are challenged by the need to balance the increasing demand for multiple ecosystem services while addressing the impacts of natural disturbances (e.g., wildfires, droughts, wind, insect attacks) and global change scenarios (e.g., climate change) on its potential supply. This challenge motivates the development of a framework for incorporating concerns with a wide range of ecosystem services in multiple criteria management planning contexts. Thus, the paper focused on both the analysis of the current state-of-the art research in forest management planning and the development of a conceptual framework to accommodate various components in a forest management process. On the basis of a thorough recent classification of forest management planning problems and the state-of-the-art research, we defined the key dimensions of the framework and the process. The emphasis was on helping to identify how concerns with a wide range of ecosystem services may be analyzed and better understood by forest ecosystem management planning. This research discusses the potential of contemporary management planning approaches to address multiple forest ecosystem services. It highlights the need for a multi-level perspective and appropriate spatial resolution to integrate multiple ecosystem services. It discusses the importance of methods and tools that may help support stakeholders’ involvement and public participation in hierarchical planning processes. The research addresses the need of methods and tools that may encapsulate the ecological, economic, and social complexity of forest ecosystem management to provide an efficient plan, information about tradeoffs between ecosystem services, and the sensitivity of the plan to uncertain parameters (e.g., prices, climate change) on time.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emin Zeki BASKENT ◽  
Jose Guilherme BORGES ◽  
Jan KASPAR

Abstract Background: Forest policy and decision makers are challenged by the need to balance the increasing demand for multiple ecosystem services while addressing the impacts of natural disturbances (e.g. wildfires, droughts, wind, insect attacks) and global change scenarios (e.g. climate change) on its potential supply. This challenge provides the motivation for the development of a framework for incorporating concerns with a wide range of ecosystem services in multiple criteria management planning contexts. Thus, the paper focused on both the analysis of the current state-of-the art in forest management planning and the development of a conceptual framework to accommodate various components in a forest ecosystem management planning process.Results: Based on a thorough recent classification of forest management planning problems and the state-of-the-art research, the key dimensions of that framework and the process were defined. The emphasis is on helping identify how concerns with a wide range of ecosystem services may be analyzed and better understood by forest ecosystem management planning. This research discusses the potential of contemporary management planning approaches to address multiple forest ecosystem services. It highlights the need of a landscape-level perspective and of spatial resolution to integrate multiple ecosystem services. It discusses the importance of methods and tools that may help support the involvement of stakeholders and public participation in hierarchical planning processes. Conclusions: The research addressed the need of methods and tools that may encapsulate the ecological, economic and social complexity of forest ecosystem management to provide an efficient plan, information about tradeoffs between ecosystem services as well as the sensitivity of the plan to uncertain parameters (e.g. prices, climate change) in a timely manner.


2012 ◽  
Vol 163 (12) ◽  
pp. 481-492
Author(s):  
Andreas Rigling ◽  
Ché Elkin ◽  
Matthias Dobbertin ◽  
Britta Eilmann ◽  
Arnaud Giuggiola ◽  
...  

Forest and climate change in the inner-Alpine dry region of Visp Over the past decades, observed increases in temperature have been particularly pronounced in mountain regions. If this trend should continue in the 21st Century, frequency and intensity of droughts will increase, and will pose major challenges for forest management. Under current conditions drought-related tree mortality is already an important factor of forest ecosystems in dry inner-Alpine valleys. Here we assess the sensitivity of forest ecosystems to climate change and evaluate alternative forest management strategies in the Visp region. We integrate data from forest monitoring plots, field experiments and dynamic forests models to evaluate how the forest ecosystem services timber production, protection against natural hazards, carbon storage and biodiver-sity will be impacted. Our results suggest that at dry low elevation sites the drought tolerance of native tree species will be exceeded so that in the longer term a transition to more drought-adapted species should be considered. At medium elevations, drought and insect disturbances as by bark beetles are projected to be important for forest development, while at high elevations forests are projected to expand and grow better. All of the ecosystem services that we considered are projected to be impacted by changing forest conditions, with the specific impacts often being elevation-dependent. In the medium term, forest management that aims to increase the resilience of forests to drought can help maintain forest ecosystem services temporarily. However, our results suggest that relatively rigid management interventions are required to achieve significant effects. By using a combination of environmental monitoring, field experiments and modeling, we are able to gain insight into how forest ecosystem, and the services they provide, will respond to future changes.


Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1079 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Marto ◽  
Keith Reynolds ◽  
José Borges ◽  
Vladimir Bushenkov ◽  
Susete Marques ◽  
...  

In this paper, we present a web-based decision support system (DSS)—wSADfLOR—to facilitate the access of stakeholders to tools that may contribute to enhancing forest management planning. The emphasis is on a web-based architecture and a web graphic user interface (wGUI) that may effectively support the analysis of trade-offs between ecosystem services in order to address participatory and sustainable forest management objectives. For that purpose, the wGUI provides remote access to a management information system, enabling users to analyze environmental and biometric data and topological information as well. Moreover, the wGUI provides remote access to forest simulators so that users may define and simulate prescriptions such as chronological sequences of management options and the corresponding forest ecosystem services outcomes. Remote access to management planning methods is further provided so that users may input their objectives and constraints. The wGUI delivers information about tradeoffs between ecosystem services in the form of decision maps so that users in different locations may negotiate bundles of ecosystem services as well as the plan needed to provide them. The multiple criteria programming routines provide proposals for management plans that may be assessed further, using geographical and alphanumeric information provided by the wGUI. Results for an application to a forested landscape extending to 14,388 ha are presented and discussed. This landscape provides several ecosystem services and the development of its management plan involves multiple stakeholders. Results show that the web-based architecture and the wGUI provide effective access for stakeholders to information about the forest management planning area and to decision support tools that may contribute to addressing complex multi-objective and multiple-decision-maker management planning contexts. They also highlight that the involvement and participation of stakeholders in the design of the web-based architecture contributes to assuring the quality and the usability of the system.


2017 ◽  
Vol 400 ◽  
pp. 542-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin J. Daniel ◽  
Michael T. Ter-Mikaelian ◽  
B. Mike Wotton ◽  
Bronwyn Rayfield ◽  
Marie-Josée Fortin

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 1244
Author(s):  
Susete Marques ◽  
Vladimir Bushenkov ◽  
Alexander Lotov ◽  
José G. Borges

Decision making in modern forest management planning is challenged by the need to recognize multiple ecosystem services and to address the preferences and goals of stakeholders. This research presents an innovative a posteriori preference modeling and multi-objective integer optimization (MOIP) approach encompassing integer programming models and a new technique for generation and interactive visualization of the Pareto frontier. Due to the complexity and size of our management problems, a decomposition approach was used to build the Pareto frontier of the general problem using the Pareto frontiers of its sub-problems. The emphasis was on the approximation of convex Edgeworth–Pareto hulls (EPHs) for the sub-problems by systems of linear inequalities; the generation of Edgeworth–Pareto hulls by the convex approximation of the Pareto frontier evinced a very small discrepancy from the real integer programming solutions. The results thus highlight the possibility of generating the Pareto frontiers of large multi-objective integer problems using our approach. This research innovated the generation of Pareto frontier methods using integer programming in order to address multiple objectives, locational specificity requirements and product even-flow constraints in landscape-level management planning problems. This may contribute to enhancing the analysis of tradeoffs between ecosystem services in large-scale problems and help forest managers address effectively the demand for forest products while sustaining the provision of services in participatory management planning processes.


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