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Land
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Decision Support Systems (DSS) for the Analysis of Pathways That...
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Decision Support Systems (DSS) for the Analysis of Pathways That Optimize Ecosystem Services Provision

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Landscape Ecology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2021) | Viewed by 6314

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Ljusk Ola Eriksson

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Guest Editor
Department of Forest Resource Management, Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SE-901 83 Umeå, Sweden
Interests: forest management; forest economics; forestry; natural resource management
Prof. Dr. José G. Borges

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Forest Research Centre (CEF), School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon, Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-017 Lisbon, Portugal
Interests: forest ecosystem management; decision support systems; operations research
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Harald Vacik

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Silviculture, Department of Forest and Soil Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, 1190 Vienna, Austria
Interests: sustainable forest management; decision support systems; multicriteria analysis; fire research
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Forests provide a wide range of products and services, but among the most urgent demands put on forest ecosystems is contributing to climate mitigation, which is why forests are given an important function for achieving climate objectives in the Paris agreement. Other initiatives, such as the EU Green Deal process, emphasize the efficient use of natural resources by moving to a circular economy and restoring biodiversity, among others.

People benefit from forest ecosystem goods and services such as nutrition and access to clean air and water, all of which affect human wellbeing. The sustained provision of these services and the aspirations on forests are therefore hotly debated among scientists as well as among other interested parties. The task of balancing the many demands on forests places policy makers and forest owners in need of reliable, valid, and comprehensive decision support systems (DSS) for the analysis of forest management strategies. In particular, there is a necessity for DSSs that support the development of long-term strategies for landscapes and regions where the complex interdependence of different ecosystem services and other values is accounted for.

The objectives of this Special Issue are to gather knowledge of the current state of the art of forest decision support technologies and methods to identify new directions of DSS development. This Special Issue has the support of the MSCA-RISE-2020 project DecisionES—Decision Support for the Supply of Ecosystem Services under Global Change (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101007950) and the ERA-NET Cofund ForestValue project NOBEL—Novel business models and mechanisms for the sustainable supply of and payment for forest ecosystem services (https://nobel.boku.ac.at/) and may contribute to a more complete list of system descriptions on the ForestDSS CoP repository (http://www.forestdss.org/CoP/).

This Special Issue is sponsored by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) Unit 4.04.04—Sustainable Forest Management Scheduling.

Prof. Dr. Ljusk Ola Eriksson
Prof. Dr. José Borges
Prof. Dr. Harald Vacik
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • decision support system
  • long term
  • landscape
  • region
  • ecosystem services
  • climate mitigation

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

22 pages, 7908 KiB  
Article
A Participatory and Spatial Multicriteria Decision Approach to Prioritize the Allocation of Ecosystem Services to Management Units
by Marlene Marques, Keith M. Reynolds, Susete Marques, Marco Marto, Steve Paplanus and José G. Borges
Land 2021, 10(7), 747; https://doi.org/10.3390/land10070747 - 16 Jul 2021
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 4142
Abstract
Forest management planning can be challenging when allocating multiple ecosystem services (ESs) to management units (MUs), given the potentially conflicting management priorities of actors. We developed a methodology to spatially allocate ESs to MUs, according to the objectives of four interest groups—civil society, [...] Read more.
Forest management planning can be challenging when allocating multiple ecosystem services (ESs) to management units (MUs), given the potentially conflicting management priorities of actors. We developed a methodology to spatially allocate ESs to MUs, according to the objectives of four interest groups—civil society, forest owners, market agents, and public administration. We applied a Group Multicriteria Spatial Decision Support System approach, combining (a) Multicriteria Decision Analysis to weight the decision models; (b) a focus group and a multicriteria Pareto frontier method to negotiate a consensual solution for seven ESs; and (c) the Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) system to prioritize the allocation of ESs to MUs. We report findings from an application to a joint collaborative management area (ZIF of Vale do Sousa) in northwestern Portugal. The forest owners selected wood production as the first ES allocation priority, with lower priorities for other ESs. In opposition, the civil society assigned the highest allocation priorities to biodiversity, cork, and carbon stock, with the lowest priority being assigned to wood production. The civil society had the highest mean rank of allocation priority scores. We found significant differences in priority scores between the civil society and the other three groups, highlighting the civil society and market agents as the most discordant groups. We spatially evaluated potential for conflicts among group ESs allocation priorities. The findings suggest that this approach can be helpful to decision makers, increasing the effectiveness of forest management plan implementation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Decision Support Systems (DSS) for the Analysis of Pathways That Optimize Ecosystem Services Provision)
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