A B S T R A C TWe are increasingly confronted with severe social and economic impacts of environmental degradation all over the world. From a valuation perspective, environmental problems and conflicts originate from trade-offs http://dx.Ecosystem Services (xxxx) xxxx-xxxx 2212-0416/ Ecosystem services Intrinsic value Benefits of nature Quality of life Participation Social and environmental justice Decision supportbetween values. The urgency and importance to integrate nature's diverse values in decisions and actions stand out more than ever.Valuation, in its broad sense of 'assigning importance', is inherently part of most decisions on natural resource and land use. Scholars from different traditions -while moving from heuristic interdisciplinary debate to applied transdisciplinary science-now acknowledge the need for combining multiple disciplines and methods to represent the diverse set of values of nature. This growing group of scientists and practitioners share the ambition to explore how combinations of ecological, socio-cultural and economic valuation tools can support real-life resource and land use decision-making.The current sustainability challenges and the ineffectiveness of single-value approaches to offer relief demonstrate that continuing along a single path is no option. We advocate for the adherence of a plural valuation culture and its establishment as a common practice, by contesting and complementing ineffective and discriminatory single-value approaches. In policy and decision contexts with a willingness to improve sustainability, integrated valuation approaches can be blended in existing processes, whereas in contexts of power asymmetries or environmental conflicts, integrated valuation can promote the inclusion of diverse values through action research and support the struggle for social and environmental justice.The special issue and this editorial synthesis paper bring together lessons from pioneer case studies and research papers, synthesizing main challenges and setting out priorities for the years to come for the field of integrated valuation.

Studies on dietary functional responses in large herbivores are traditionally conducted by following individual animals. The method is very time-consuming, and hence, typically provides only a narrow array of forage species compositions. Here we use a range level approach to look at moose (Alces alces) selectivity for and utilization of forage species in relation to availability in both summer and winter. We compare 12 Norwegian ranges representing a large scale gradient in plant communities. The most important forage species in the diet were birches (Betula spp., comprising 43% of all trees browsed in summer and 27% in winter), rowan (Sorbus aucuparia, 25% of trees browsed in summer, 37% in winter), and bilberry (Vaccinum myrtillus, 42% of herbaceous epidermal fragments in summer feces). Selectivity for birches was positively related to its availability and negatively related to availability of rowan, Salix spp., and aspen (Populus tremula) together (all more selected for than birches). Multiple regression models including availability of several forage species were thus superior to single-species models in explaining the diet content of main forage plants. Selectivity for birches was also stronger in summer than in winter, while the opposite pattern was found for rowan. The finding is relevant for our evaluation of the quality of summer and winter ranges, and hence, their relative influence on population productivity. Our study underlines the need to incorporate species composition of available forage when quantifying dietary functional responses in selective herbivores such as moose. Furthermore, care should be taken when extrapolating data on moose diet across ranges or seasons.

Abstract. The research literature on food selection by large herbivores is extensive. Still, we are generally lacking in our knowledge of the influence of potentially interacting chemical contents of the food. We made a qualitative review of a systematic literature search of studies that empirically link chemical contents of food to the food selection by northern cervids (genera Alces, Capreolus, Cervus, Dama, Odocoileus, Rangifer). We found that although the majority of the 98 relevant studies measuring any given food constituent (energy, protein, fiber, minerals, plant secondary metabolites) provided support for it acting as a driver of food selection (in either a negative or positive way), there was little support for the traditional hypotheses of maximization or limitation of any single constituent. Rather, because of the animals' need to acquire an appropriate intake of several constituents at the same time, our review highlights how new empirical studies need to focus on several food constituents in synchrony: (1) Study designs should capture sufficient variation in the content of food constituents in order to tease apart their many co-variations; and (2) insights about nutritional drivers may be lost if one uses only composite currencies such as crude energy, crude fiber, ash, or tannins, which may mask contrasting selection patterns of the lumped constituents. Season had an apparent influence on the selection of some food constituents, particularly various fiber fractions. In contrast, our review revealed a lack of evidence that cervids more strongly select for protein in summer than they do in winter. Our overall conclusion of the review is that interacting chemical contents of food make the nutritional value of a given food type into a varying entity. To better elucidate this variation, we need new technologies that non-invasively capture nutrient intake of free-ranging animals, across seasons.

Availability of preferred forage is hypothesized to be positively related to demographic performance in selective ungulates. Comparing two regions with high density of moose ( Alces alces (L., 1758)) having contrasting demographic performance and different composition of available plant species, we show that such a positive relationship may not always apply. The high-performance region (HP) had an estimated 41% higher total availability of browse per capita than the low-performance region (LP), but the availability of preferred species did not differ between the two regions. Although birch (genus Betula L.) was the most abundant browse in both regions (comprising 66% and 50% of the shoot amount available per m2 in HP and LP, respectively), it dominated the diet of moose only in HP (constituting, e.g., 69% of all trees browsed in summer compared with 22% in LP). Further research is needed to identify the cause of the seemingly suboptimal use of birch in LP. We also quantified factors that determine forage availability, of which recent logging clearly was the most important: it multiplied browse availability but also reduced coverage of bilberry ( Vaccinum myrtillus  L.), an important forage plant. Our study shows that for selective ungulates, indices of carrying capacity based on forage availability may not apply uniformly across ranges.

10Ecosystems provide services for many stakeholder groups, often with a conflict of interests that 11 hampers sustainability. Core to these conflicts is the challenge of trading-off monetary and non-12 monetary measures. Presenting a socio-ecologically integrated trade-off model, and using the boreal

People provide wild ungulates with large quantities of supplementary feed to improve their health and survival and reduce forest damage. Whereas supplementary feeding can positively affect the winter survival of ungulates and short-term hunting success, some of the feeds provided may actually reduce ungulate health and increase forest damage. Here, we highlight how recent advances in ungulate nutritional ecology can help explain why supplementary feeding can lead to undesirable outcomes. Using Europe's largest cervid, the moose (Alces alces), as a model species, and Sweden, as the socio-ecological context, we explain the concept of nutritional balancing and its relevance to supplementary feeding. Nutritional balancing refers to how animals alter their food intake to achieve a specific nutritional target balance in their diet, by selecting balanced food items or by combining items with nutritional compositions that are complimentary. As the most common supplementary feeds used contain higher concentrations of non-structural carbohydrates than the ungulates' normal winter diet, the consumption of such feeds may cause animals to increase their intake of woody browse, and thereby exacerbate forest damage. We also explain how animal health may be negatively affected by large intakes of such feed if complementary browse items are not available. We therefore suggest that the use of inappropriate feed is an additional means by which supplementary feeding may result in negative outcomes for hunters, forest owners, and wild animals.

Diet quality is an important determinant of animal survival and reproduction, and can be described as the combination of different food items ingested, and their nutritional composition. For large herbivores, human landscape modifications to vegetation can limit such diet-mixing opportunities. Here we use southern Sweden's modified landscapes to assess winter diet mixtures (as an indicator of quality) and food availability as drivers of body mass (BM) variation in wild moose (Alces alces). We identify plant species found in the rumen of 323 moose harvested in Oct-Feb, and link variation in average calf BM among populations to diets and food availability. Our results show that variation in calf BM correlates with variation in diet composition, diversity, and food availability. A varied diet relatively rich in broadleaves was associated with higher calf BM than a less variable diet dominated by conifers. A diet high in shrubs and sugar/starch rich agricultural crops was associated with intermediate BM. The proportion of young production forest (0-15 yrs) in the landscape, an indicator of food availability, significantly accounted for variation in calf BM. Our findings emphasize the importance of not only diet composition and forage quantity, but also variability in the diets of large free-ranging herbivores. Eating is complicated. Animals have to trade off a food item's potential energetic and nutritional gains against the risks of acquisition, such as the increased vulnerability to predation, exposure to plant toxins, or conspecific antagonism 1. What an individual eats, and where and when it does so, will in turn affect its fitness 2,3 , as diet quality is an important determinant of reproduction and survival in animal populations 4. For cervids (members of the deer family Cervidae), diet has repeatedly been shown to influence physiological and reproductive fitness 5-7. The impact of diet on individual fitness can occur through changes in body mass (BM), as well as through maternal nutritional effects 8,9 that can have flow-on implications for several generations 10. Diet quality is primarily determined by the combination of different plant items ingested, and each item's nutritional composition 11. A high diversity of available food items should enable a balanced intake of nutrients and energy 11 , and the avoidance of high doses of each plant species' defensive chemicals 12. Globally, intensive land management practices are altering an increasing proportion of land area 13,14. This can cause food resources to become concentrated in space and time 15 , and constrain the ability of cervids to acquire a suitable diet. Even in sparsely inhabited northern Europe, human modification of the landscape has been extensive 16 , with some regions primarily defined by intensive forestry, agriculture, urban environments, and limited protected areas. Humans largely control both the cervids' food resources and mortality rates. In many regions, this has led to an increase in some cervid populations 17. Furthermore, in these env...

15Increasing abundance of large herbivores combined with changes in forestry practices has led 16 to increased forest damage in many temperate and boreal forest areas. The role of alternative 17 forage as a driver for browsing pressure on tree species important for forestry has received 18 increased attention. However, actions to reduce damage through altering forage abundance 19 must be carried out at spatial scales that correspond to the behavioral processes that generate 20 the browsing pattern. We used a multi-scaled dataset on browse abundance and utilization in 21 Southern Norway to assess how pine browsing damage was related to abundance and quality 22 of browse measured at different spatial scales. Pine trees had a lower probability to be 23 browsed at high pine abundance at all spatial scales. However, the abundance and quality of 24 alternative browse was negatively related to pine browsing (i.e. associational resistance) at 25 several spatial scales, with the highest explanatory power at the largest spatial scale. 26Management actions to reduce pine browsing by moose should focus on facilitating high 27 abundance of both pine and alternative high-quality browse, and should be carried out at 28 sufficiently large spatial scales (moose home range scale or larger).