A Design for Addressing Multiple Ecosystem Services in Forest Management Planning

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.