Management of Multiple Ecosystem Services under Climate Change, Bioeconomy and Participation

Abstract

The Special Issue “Decision Support to Address Multiple Ecosystem Services in Forest Management Planning” includes nine research papers, two review papers, and a white paper presenting highlights of focused research initiatives. The papers provide a comprehensive framework for the analysis and review of advanced Decision Support Systems (DSS), which are multi-criteria decision approaches. Their emphasis is on how these methods and tools may contribute to address the multi-functionality of forests, to support scenario and trade-off analysis of ecosystem services, and to represent interests and behavior of various stakeholders. In the context of forest ecosystem management, a need has arisen to consider various dimensions in the design of the planning process. This calls for the development of appropriate mixes of decision making tools and methods and for its testing with the support of case studies. In this Special Issue, comments on, and implications of, the improvement of innovative decision methods and systems to address the provision of a wide range of ecosystem services and support scenario analysis with the active involvement of stakeholders are presented.

Complex networks, an innovative methodology for functional zoning in forest management

“…To increase the adaptiveness of forest management plans to future environmental changes and promote the ecosystem services prevalence, we need to develop methodologies that incorporate landscape structural metrics at the stand scale such as proximity, land cover classes, diversity, and size (Cosović et al 2020, Rodrigues et al 2021. In response to this need, several studies have developed different methodological frameworks to explore the relationships among the landscape functions and define a proper multifunctional forest zoning (Müller et al 2020, Baskent et al 2021, Rodrigues et al 2021. However, none has used complex network theory to date.…”

Smart-Solutions for Wildfire Risk Prevention: Bottom-Up Initiatives Meet Top-Down Policies Under EU Green Deal

“…The European Commission is currently pursuing multiple strategies with enormous implications on wildfire risk prevention and the capacity of building fire-smart territories (FST). The Bioeconomy strategy (European Commission, 2018) aims to make production chains sustainable, greening industrial products and promoting renewable resources, enhancing the active role of forests (Baskent et al, 2021;Jonsson et al, 2021). Wildfire risk prevention might greatly benefit from this strategy, thanks to incentives to sustainable wood and nonwood products mobilization and active land management in high fire risk areas (Verkerk et al, 2018).…”