There is increasing interest worldwide regarding managing plantation forests in a manner that maintains or improves timber production, enhances ecosystem services, and promotes long‐term sustainability of forest resources. We selected the Gan River Basin, the largest catchment of Poyang Lake and a region with a typical plantation distribution in South China, as the study region. We evaluated and mapped four important forest ecosystem services, including wood volume, carbon storage, water yield, and soil retention at a 30 × 30 m resolution, then quantified their trade‐offs and synergies at the county and subwatershed scales. We found that the wood volume and carbon storage services, as well as the soil retention and water yield, exhibited synergistic relationships. However, the carbon storage displayed a trade‐off relationship with the water yield. Additionally, we compared the beneficial spatial characteristics among dominant species in the study region. The results showed that the Chinese fir forest and the pine forest exhibited lower overall benefits than natural forests including the broad‐leaved forest and the bamboo forest. To propose a suitable management strategy for the study region, method of spatial cluster analysis was used based on the four eco‐services at the subwatershed scale. The basin was divided into four management groups instead of treating the region as a homogenous management region. Finally, we proposed more specific and diverse management strategies to optimize forest benefits throughout the entire region.
The tradeoffs and optimizations of ecosystem services are the key research fields of ecology and geography. It is necessary to maximize the overall benefit of timber production and carbon storage for forest ecological development in China. We selected the Huitong National Research Station of Forest Ecosystem as our study area, and used InVEST model to evaluate timber production and carbon storage quantitatively. The results showed that: (1) While timber production increased with harvesting intensity over the planning horizon, carbon storage decreased. There were tradeoffs between timber production and carbon storage according to the significant negative relationship. (2) While the overall benefit of timber production and carbon storage increased with harvesting intensity, the value of tradeoffs decreased. T1 and T2 scenarios, with harvesting intensity of 10%-20% every 10 years, are the optimum management regimes for the two ecosystem services to gain more benefit and less tradeoffs. (3) The current harvesting intensity in Huitong County was slightly higher than the optimum harvesting intensity. On practical dimension, these findings suggested that obvious objectives are needed to formulate the corresponding countermeasures of tradeoffs, in order to realize the improvement of ecosystem services and the optimization of ecosystem structures.
Forest ecosystem services are intrinsically linked. We design a spatially explicit approach to quantify and analyze the co-benefits and trade-offs between the main forest ecosystem services. Our goal is to develop criteria for forest management that include ecosystem service interactions. Chinese fir and pine plantations provide the largest portion of the overall ecosystem services currently provided. They are volume stock and water yield service hotspots, but these have negative effects on soil retention and carbon storage, causing environmental problems. The natural forests (broad-leaf and bamboo forests) are carbon storage and volume stock hotspots and show the lowest erosion modulus. Thus, their protection, combined with expanding the plantation area under forest management should be considered in order to increase ecosystem service synergies. In contrast, an increased area of broad-leaf plantations reduces water yield service due to their lower water production capacity, in comparison with plantations of fast-growing species. Our study shows that the inclusion of ecosystem services as part of forest management could provide opportunities for optimal allocation of forest resources and sustainable utilization. Management based only on economically beneficial ecosystem services can be detrimental to the forest ecosystem and can cause environmental problems.
Plantations in Southern China are experiencing several major problems concerning even-aged forest structures and dwindling ecosystem services under traditional forest management. The objective of this study was to determine the best management regimes (BMRs) for sustainable forest management using the Moshao forest farm as a case study. We constructed a framework for BMR modeling characterized by highly scheduled timber production (STP), low fluctuations in periodically scheduled timber harvest levels (FPS), and age class structure (ACS) at the end of the planning horizon. A paired analysis was conducted between the three indicators to identify suitable management planning for long-term timber production. Our results suggest that STP, FPS, and ACS are correlated, enabling the control of these forest performance indicators by setting various harvesting intensities in a planning horizon. We found that management regimes (MRS) with cutting area percentages from 20% to 40% and a cutting period of 10 years combined with small-area clear-cutting (≤5 ha) are optimal (MR6–MR10) for the Moshao forest farm in Southern China. In particular, MR with a cutting area percentage of 35% is the best option (MR9). These findings suggest that an applicable MR is designed by identifying the optimal harvesting intensity. The current local harvesting intensity can be properly increased to balance between timber production and ecological impacts on plantations.
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