Ecosystem Services From Forest Landscapes

Over the last two decades, the topic of forest ecosystem services has attracted the attention of researchers, land managers, and policy makers around the globe. The services rendered by forest ecosystems range from intrinsic to anthropocentric benefits that are typically grouped as provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural. The research efforts, assessments, and attempts to manage forest ecosystems for their sustained services are now widely published in scientific literature. This volume focuses on broad-scale aspects of forest ecosystem services, beyond individual stands to large landscapes. In doing so, it illustrates the conceptual and practical opportunities as well as challenges involved with planning for forest ecosystem services across landscapes, regions, and nations. The goal here is to broaden the scope of land use planning through the adoption of a landscape-scale approach. Even though this approach is complex and involves multiple ecological, social, cultural, economic, and political dimensions, the landscape perspective appears to offer the best opportunity for a sustained provision of forest ecosystem services.

Mountain forest ecosystems provide a wide range of direct and indirect contributions to the people who live in the mountains and surrounding areas. Occupying steep slopes at high elevation, these ecosystems provide services such as stabilizing slopes, regulating hydrological cycles, maintaining rich biodiversity and supporting the livelihoods of those who are diverse in culture but vulnerable to poverty and food security. This paper (i) reviews several tools for assessing the sociocultural, economic and ecological values of mountain forest ecosystem services, (ii) demonstrates case studies of tool applications from several countries namely, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Iran and Nepal, and (iii) discusses assessment challenges that should be considered in the application of these tools. In Bhutan, an application of benefit transfer showed that the average total value of forest ecosystem services was over USD 14.5 billion per year. In India, an application of stakeholder and household analyses indicated that a total of 29 different ecosystem services are available and sustain livelihoods of local communities near the Maguri Mottapung wetland. In Indonesia, an application of Q methodology identified anticipated benefits and concerns of forest watershed stakeholders related to certification applications for a payment for ecosystem services. In Iran, an application of the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs Tool showed that the regulation of ecosystem services has been declining in Hyrcanian forests despite the forests’ critical roles in the region. In Nepal, an application of a spatial analytical approach and participatory assessment techniques identified key mountain ecosystem services for community forests at the Charnawolti sub-watershed of Dolakha, and demonstrated forest restoration on degraded lands over the last two decades. Several challenges exist for the assessment of mountain forest ecosystem services and these must be reflected in assessment design. These challenges include the complexity of defining and classifying ecosystem services; limited availability of data on ecosystem services; uncertainties associated with climate change; complex relationships among services including trade-offs and synergies; and limitation of assessments to build successful payments for ecosystem services.

Climate change, urban sprawl, abandonment of agriculture, intensification of forestry and agriculture, changes in energy generation and use, expansion of infrastructure networks, habitat destruction and degradation, and other drivers of change occur at increasing rates. They affect patterns and processes in forest landscapes, and modify ecosystem services derived from those ecosystems. Consequently, rapidly changing landscapes present many new challenges to scientists and managers. While it is not uncommon to encounter the terms “global change” and “landscape” together in the ecological literature, a global analyses of drivers of change in forest landscapes, and their ecological consequences have not been addressed adequately. That is the goal of this volume: an exploration of the state of knowledge of global changes in forested landscapes with emphasis on causes and effects, and challenges faced by researchers and land managers. Initial chapters identify and describe major agents of landscape change: climate, fire, and human activities. The next series of chapters address implications of changes on ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation and carbon flux. A chapter that describes methodologies of detecting and monitoring landscape changes is presented followed by chapter that highlights the many challenges forest landscape managers face amidst of global change. Finally, we present a summary and a synthesis of the main points presented in the book. Each chapter will contain the individual research experiences of chapter authors, augmented by review and synthesis of global scientific literature on relevant topics, as well as critical input from multiple peer reviewers.

At last a really useful book telling us how all the rhetoric about ecosystem approaches and sustainable forest management is being translated into practical solutions on the ground CLAUDE MARTIN, WWF INTERNATIONAL For too long, foresters have seen forests as logs waiting to be turned into something useful. This book demonstrates that forests in fact have multiple values, and managing them as ecosystems will bring more benefits to a greater cross-section of the public JEFFREY A. MCNEELY, CHIEF SCIENTIST, IUCN This book demonstrates that [ecosystem approaches and sustainable forest management] are neither alternative methods of forest management nor are they simply complicated ways of saying the same thing. They are both emerging concepts for more integrated and holistic ways of managing forests within larger landscapes in ways that optimize benefits to all stakeholders ACHIM STEINER AND IAN JOHNSON, FROM THE FOREWORD Recent innovations in Sustainable Forest Management and Ecosystem Approaches are resulting in forests increasingly being managed as part of the broader social-ecological systems in which they exist. Forests in Landscapes reviews changes that have occurred in forest management in recent decades. Case studies from Europe, Canada, the United States, Russia, Australia, the Congo and Central America provide a wealth of international examples of innovative practices. Cross-cutting chapters examine the political ecology and economics of forest management, and review the information needs and the use and misuse of criteria and indicators to achieve broad societal goals for forests. A concluding chapter draws out the key lessons of changes in forest management in recent decades and sets out some thoughts for the future. This book is a must-read for practitioners, researchers and policy makers concerned with forests and land use. It contains lessons for all those concerned with forests as sources of people's livelihoods and as part of rural landscapes. Published with IUCN and PROFOR

The continued conversion and development of forest land pose a serious threat to the ecosystem services derived from forested landscapes. There are unavoidable challenges involved in quantifying the threats from forest conversion and their related costs to human well-being: (1) most attempts to quantify the costs of forest conversion on ecosystem services will necessarily rely on specific ecological science that is often emerging, changing, or simply nonexistent; (2) given the interconnected nature of ecosystem products and processes, any attempt to quantify the effects of forest conversion must grapple with jointness in production; (3) the ecology and the human dimensions of ecosystems are highly specific to spatial-temporal circumstances.

Designing Sustainable Forest Landscapes is a definitive guide to the design and management of forest landscapes, covering the theory and principles of forest design as well as providing practical guidance on methods and tools. Including a variety of international case studies the book focuses on ecosystem regeneration, the management of natural forests and the management of plantation forests. Using visualisation techniques, design processes and evaluation techniques it looks at promoting landscapes which are designed to optimise the balance between human intervention and natural evolution. A comprehensive, practical and accessible book, Designing Sustainable Forest Landscapes is essential reading for all those involved in forestry and landscape professions.

Increasing evidence suggests that the composition and spatial configuration – the pattern – of forest landscapes affect many ecological processes, including the movement and persistence of particular species, the susceptibility and spread of disturbances such as fires or pest outbreaks, and the redistribution of matter and nutrients. Understanding these issues is key to the successful management of complex, multifunctional forest landscapes, and landscape ecology, based on a foundation of island bio-geography and meta-population dynamic theories, provides the rationale to deal with this pattern-to-process interaction at different spatial and temporal scales. This carefully edited volume represents a stimulating addition to the international literature on landscape ecology and resource management. It provides key insights into some of the applicable landscape ecological theories that underlie forest management, with a specific focus on how forest management can benefit from landscape ecology, and how landscape ecology can be advanced by tackling challenging problems in forest (landscape) management. It also presents a series of case studies from Europe, Asia, North America, Africa and Australia exploring the issues of disturbance, diversity, management, and scale, and with a specific focus on how human intervention affects forest landscapes and, in turn, how landscapes influence humans and their culture. An important reference for advanced students and researchers in landscape ecology, conservation biology, forest ecology, natural resource management and ecology across multiple scales, the book will also appeal to researchers and practitioners in reserve design, ecological restoration, forest management, landscape planning and landscape architecture.

This guide showcases the increasing interest in ecosystem services, discusses the motivations for valuations of FES (forest ecosystem services) at the State level, and places this work in the context of economic accounting. Readers may be interested in this report to expand their understanding of approaches used and value forest ecosystem services. However, the intended target audience for this report is State forestry officials charged with requesting, selecting, guiding, and evaluating the results of FES assessments in their states. Foresters, construction officials utilizing forest based products, educators, instructors and students in the fields of environmental science and forestry, environmentalists, and investors in the forest products category may also be interested in this work. Check out our Environment & Nature resources collection here:https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/environment-nature Trees & Forests collection here:https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/environment-nature Water Management collection here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/water-management