Can Existing Estimates for Ecosystem Service Values Inform Forest Management?

Round  1

Reviewer 1 Report

Title: How to Bring Forest Ecosystem Services into Decision-Making Journal: Forests

In general the manuscript reads well and I think that it fits into the scope of journal Forests. In my opinion is a interesting paper reviewing thechniques and methods to value non marketable products/services.The country scale is an added value to infer recommendations and forest policies.

 
However, I feel there are some alterations to this manuscript to make it acceptable in its present form. Below are presented the main comments along with a  list of smaller points. Once such modifications are made, the manuscript needs another thorough examination to see whether the objectives, presented data,
 interpretations and discussion lead to sound and valuable conclusions.

General comments:

  * Avoid sections in the abstract. Please merge the text in a single paragraph.

  * Line19: replace "public goods or positive externalities" by "public goods and positive externalities.

  * Line 85: Remove word see from "See Figure"

  * Line 124: Authors mention in this paragraph that MCDA is used to integrate ES in decision making and to solve complex problems, but I only see one reference. There are various and sound studies recently publised deling exactly with this kind of problems. E.g.

Marques, S.; Marto, M.; Bushenkov, V.; McDill, M.; Borges, J. Addressing wildfire risk in forest management planning with multiple criteria decision making methods. Sustainability 2017, 9, 298.

Borges, J.G.; Garcia-Gonzalo, J.; Bushenkov, V.; McDill, M.E.; Marques, S.; Oliveira, M.M. Addressing multicriteria forest management with Pareto frontier methods: An application in Portugal. For. Sci. 2014, 60, 63–72.

Tóth, S.F.; McDill, M.E.; Rebain, S. Finding the Efficient Frontier of a Bi-Criteria, Spatially Explicit, Harvest Scheduling Problem. For. Sci. 2006, 52, 93–107

Garcia-Gonzalo, J.; Bushenkov, V.; McDill, M.E.; Borges, J. A Decision Support System for Assessing Trade-Offs between Ecosystem Management Goals: An Application in Portugal. Forests 2015, 6, 65–73.

Marto M.,Reynolds  Keith M.,  Bushenkov V. A. and Marques M. Combining Decision Support Approaches for Optimizing the Selection of Bundles of Ecosystem Services, Forests 2018, 9, 438.

    * If authors point 5 valuation methods ( Travel cost method, Hedonic pricing, Continget valuation method, Choice experiments and Benefit transfer), why focus only on one? And why BT? Give a better explanation.

    * Improve a little bit the explanation about BT technique? How it works? 

    * If authors classify this paper as a review paper, mention the pool where the references were collected (CAB, Science Direct). Which criteria was used to select the articles cited. Write a small paragraph about it in database description, that I suggest remane it for Data Collection

  * The author must avoid "grey literature". In a review paper the cited literature should include publised papers (with DOI), books, book chapter etc... not reports or documents that are difficult to access or written in local languages. 

   *  Line 85: Remove word see from "See Annex"

  * Improve the quality of figure. Is to small and becouse of the size used some color in some bars are very hard to distinguish. Please change the colors of the bars.

  * The authors should use the same terminology along the manuscript (e.g in line 232, its mentioned "see Annex", and there's no Annex section but a Appendix section.

  * Move the section 3.6 Resumé, to the beggininbg of section 4

  * When you use abbreviations, first you need to define it. The table in appendix 1 it has all the currancy abbreviated but not defined. You can add the definition in the caption of the table

* I dont understand the need for the list of supplementary information, if its not mentioned in the manuscript. Moreover, more than 50% of the references are grey literature.

Author Response

Reviewer 1

In general the manuscript reads well and I think that it fits into the scope of journal Forests. In my opinion is an interesting paper reviewing techniques and methods to value non marketable products/services. The country scale is an added value to infer recommendations and forest policies.

However, I feel there are some alterations to this manuscript to make it acceptable in its present form. Below are presented the main comments along with a list of smaller points. Once such modifications are made, the manuscript needs another thorough examination to see whether the objectives, presented data, interpretations and discussion lead to sound and valuable conclusions.

1. Avoid sections in the abstract. Please merge the text in a single paragraph.

Authors’ response: We have now merged the text.

2. Line19: replace "public goods or positive externalities" by "public goods and positive externalities.

Authors’ response: We have rephrased the words accordingly.

3. Line 85: Remove word see from "See Figure"

Authors’ response: We have adapted the text accordingly.

4. Line 124: Authors mention in this paragraph that MCDA is used to integrate ES in decision making and to solve complex problems, but I only see one reference. There are various and sound studies recently published dealing exactly with this kind of problems. E.g.

Marques, S.; Marto, M.; Bushenkov, V.; McDill, M.; Borges, J. Addressing wildfire risk in forest management planning with multiple criteria decision making methods. Sustainability 2017, 9, 298.

Borges, J.G.; Garcia-Gonzalo, J.; Bushenkov, V.; McDill, M.E.; Marques, S.; Oliveira, M.M. Addressing multicriteria forest management with Pareto frontier methods: An application in Portugal. For. Sci. 2014, 60, 63–72.

Tóth, S.F.; McDill, M.E.; Rebain, S. Finding the Efficient Frontier of a Bi-Criteria, Spatially Explicit, Harvest Scheduling Problem. For. Sci. 2006, 52, 93–107

Garcia-Gonzalo, J.; Bushenkov, V.; McDill, M.E.; Borges, J. A Decision Support System for Assessing Trade-Offs between Ecosystem Management Goals: An Application in Portugal. Forests 2015, 6, 65–73.

Marto M.,Reynolds  Keith M.,  Bushenkov V. A. and Marques M. Combining Decision Support Approaches for Optimizing the Selection of Bundles of Ecosystem Services, Forests 2018, 9, 438.

Authors’ response: Thank you very much for the literature recommendations. We have now added these references (lines 129-146 in the track-change document).

5. If authors point 5 valuation methods (Travel cost method, Hedonic pricing, Contingent valuation method, Choice experiments and Benefit transfer), why focus only on one? And why BT? Give a better explanation.

Authors’ response: As the focus of the paper is meant to be on BT, we thought that explaining the other methods would distract the reader. Based on the reviewer’s comment we have now added a brief explanation of the other methods (lines 188-219 in the track-change document). Notwithstanding, the focus remains on BT, because we want to show in how far the estimates derived by the other methods can appropriately be used for benefit transfer. We now point this out in the text (lines 185ff in the track-change document).

6. Improve a little bit the explanation about BT technique? How it works? 

Authors’ response: We extended the existing description by explanatory examples (lines 230 – 240 in the track-change document).

7. If authors classify this paper as a review paper, mention the pool where the references were collected (CAB, Science Direct). Which criteria was used to select the articles cited. Write a small paragraph about it in database description, that I suggest rename it for Data Collection

Authors’ response: We renamed the sectioned as proposed and added some selection criteria (lines 273 & 277-282 in the track-change document)

8. The author must avoid "grey literature". In a review paper the cited literature should include published papers (with DOI), books, book chapter etc... not reports or documents that are difficult to access or written in local languages. 

Authors’ response: We added the missing dois. Nevertheless, we can’t completely avoid grey literature as especially on national level, there is mainly grey literature (same for literature written in local language). Furthermore, we would like to see to which extend those studies could add value to the scope of this paper.

9. Line 85: Remove word see from "See Annex"

Authors’ response: We have now removed the word.

10. Improve the quality of figure. Is too small and because of the size used some color in some bars are very hard to distinguish. Please change the colors of the bars.

Authors’ response: We have now improved the quality of the figure to make it better readable.

11. The authors should use the same terminology along the manuscript (e.g. in line 232, its mentioned "see Annex", and there's no Annex section but an Appendix section.

Authors’ response: Thank you very much for the note, was our fault and should be ok now.

12. Move the section 3.6 Resume, to the beginning of section 4

Authors’ response: We have rearranged the text accordingly.

13. When you use abbreviations, first you need to define it. The table in appendix 1 it has all the currency abbreviated but not defined. You can add the definition in the caption of the table

Authors’ response: We have now defined all abbreviations.

14. I don’t understand the need for the list of supplementary information, if it’s not mentioned in the manuscript. Moreover, more than 50% of the references are grey literature.

Authors’ response: We have deleted this section. These were all the studies used for the database.

Reviewer 2 Report

I reviewed the manuscript entitled “How to Bring Forest Ecosystem Services into Decision-Making”. The manuscript deal with forest ecosystem services and how to use and integrated economic valuation model (focusing mainly on benefit transfer) built on existing data, to practically inform management. I think that the topic is a relevant one, because research needs to find methods to practically enhance conservation strategies based on ecosystem services valuation. However, the way the authors developed the study does not lead to any effective answer to this question. On the contrary, it seems they find that an economic valuation based on already existing data does not work at all in give useful information. Overall, I think that the manuscript needs a substantial revision before being taken in consideration for publication, especially in the data analysis and discussion.

I have some specific comments below that I hope can help in identify the main issues of this work:

- First, the title. I think it is not appropriate because it is misleading. You do not give an answer to the issue How to bring ecosystem services into decision-making. I, and every readers, would expect that, but in your study I cannot see a methodology to bring ES into decision-making.

- Lines 142-144: not very clear what you mean. What are forest ES coefficients?

- Line 145: what do you mean exactly here for primary studies? You should clearly explain for the readers

- Lines 286-288: “However, mean values based on the remaining data are still difficult to interpret, and it is uncertain how robust and useful valuation results really are, if they show such a wide range.” I think this is a fundamental point of your study. If you take already existing data, made with different methodology, then you should be sure analysis were properly made. Otherwise you find yourself to discuss data with low value in scientific terms.

- Line 310: “Even when considering similar background conditions, the values still show a wide range.“ Do you consider this is point something that can be overcome in some way? Or do you expect exactly this, considering that recreational benefits but in general all cultural ecosystem services are fundamentally determined by local characteristics and peoples’ perception that cannot be predicted just considering background conditions of the forest? Why should they have a little range of values I ask? I would like a comment on this aspect.

- Line 355-356: “In consequence, integrating forest ES values in decision-making and planning processes using BT of existing data seems difficult.” That seems to be the main findings of your study. It would need to be better discussed if you want to keep the manuscript with this structure and the objective that you said.

- Paragraph 3.6: I understand the difficulties of analysis such as trying to group valuations in a logic and useful way, but seems that you are saying that you have find no way to analyse properly your data… that’s not so much intriguing for the reader.

Lines 419-422: “It turned out that no underlying pattern concerning the distribution of values for single forest ES can be found – neither regional differences, nor the valued service nor the applied valuation method can explain the wide range of values. Nevertheless, valuing ES seems to be a promising way of making the different ES comparable and give a kind of orientation line to facilitate decision making processes.” This is a bit contradictory, I can’t find the logic between the two sentences. You say that, despite all the efforts made to analyse the data, there is not an underlying pattern describing the distribution of values, BUT (and I miss here the point) valuing ES seems promising for make comparison. Can you explain how you arrive to this conclusion from the results obtained from your study (that, to me, seems very discouraging)?

- Lines 426-433: “Provided that the above mentioned requirements are fulfilled, BT offers an opportunity for researchers and policy-makers facing time and budget constraints [62]and can help to design policies to improve future changes, e.g., offering a spectrum of possibilities and different scenarios [63]. BT can help prioritize practical actions and develop financial instruments like incentives or financial support mechanisms [62]. Furthermore, the economic valuation of forest ES is a helpful tool to raise awareness showing that they are appreciated by the population but also that their provision generates costs. Comparing costs and benefits of different forest management alternatives could be a basis for welfare-improving decisions related to the provisioning of ES.” But nothing of this can be deduce from your result, this is not your conclusion, these are results from other (different) studies… Otherwise, you should provide argumentation about how, actually, your results help to design policies, or to compare forest management alternatives that help inform decisions.

- Lines 435-437: “In conclusion, the economic valuation of forest ecosystem services can be a helpful approach to improve management decisions by making forest ES comparable, even if dealing with several challenges and uncertainties.” Again, I would like to read a solid explanation about how and why you conclude that economic valuation can be helpful to make ES values comparable, based on your study.

- Lines 438 until the end: If these are the aspects that make the economic valuation from secondary analyses an interesting methodology, I think they should be better argued more extensively in order to convince the reader.

The final impression is that other results -more encouraging- were expected, but then many issues arise during the analysis of the data and you didn’t find the proper way to analyse them in order to get useful information (maybe you simply cannot).

To my point of view, it looks that your results do not support the conclusion that economic valuation of ES are promising for make comparison, at all. I am not saying that it is not true, but that this cannot be inferred from the results presented in this study. So you have to reformulate your conclusion, or try another way to analyse your data or change the initial aims.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

I reviewed the manuscript entitled “How to Bring Forest Ecosystem Services into Decision-Making”. The manuscript deals with forest ecosystem services and how to use and integrated economic valuation model (focusing mainly on benefit transfer) built on existing data, to practically inform management. I think that the topic is a relevant one, because research needs to find methods to practically enhance conservation strategies based on ecosystem services valuation. However, the way the authors developed the study does not lead to any effective answer to this question. On the contrary, it seems they find that an economic valuation based on already existing data does not work at all in give useful information. Overall, I think that the manuscript needs a substantial revision before being taken in consideration for publication, especially in the data analysis and discussion.

I have some specific comments below that I hope can help in identify the main issues of this work:

1. First, the title. I think it is not appropriate because it is misleading. You do not give an answer to the issue How to bring ecosystem services into decision-making. I, and every reader, would expect that, but in your study I cannot see a methodology to bring ES into decision-making.

Authors’ response: We changed the title to: “Can Existing Estimates for Ecosystem Service Values Inform Forest Management?” We completely agree that the first version was misleading and didn’t properly fit the scope of the paper.

2. Lines 142-144: not very clear what you mean. What are forest ES coefficients?

Authors’ response: We changed “coefficient” into “values”.

3. Line 145: what do you mean exactly here for primary studies? You should clearly explain for the readers

Authors’ response: We hope our newly inserted explanation makes it clearer. We added: “Primary studies investigate ecosystem service values based on either of the below described valuation method: travel cost method, hedonic pricing, contingent valuation, or choice experiments.”

4. Lines 286-288: “However, mean values based on the remaining data are still difficult to interpret, and it is uncertain how robust and useful valuation results really are, if they show such a wide range.” I think this is a fundamental point of your study. If you take already existing data, made with different methodology, then you should be sure analyses were properly made. Otherwise you find yourself to discuss data with low value in scientific terms.

Authors’ response: You are completely right. As this is an essential point, we moved the section to the more general part at the beginning of the section (below Figure 5). We also added: “That does not mean that existing valuations are inappropriate. It just indicates that valuation is highly context-specific so that it is difficult to transfer the results of existing studies to other valuation cases.”

5. Line 310: “Even when considering similar background conditions, the values still show a wide range.“ Do you consider this is point something that can be overcome in some way? Or do you expect exactly this, considering that recreational benefits but in general all cultural ecosystem services are fundamentally determined by local characteristics and peoples’ perception that cannot be predicted just considering background conditions of the forest? Why should they have a little range of values I ask? I would like a comment on this aspect.

Authors’ response: Thank you very much for this input. Indeed, we expected this result, and as it deserves to be presented in a clearer way, we added a new paragraph (lines 385-391 in the track-change document) and explained why the wide range of values is no surprise fur cultural services in general and can’t be predicted solely based on background conditions of the forest area.

6. Line 355-356: “In consequence, integrating forest ES values in decision-making and planning processes using BT of existing data seems difficult.” That seems to be the main findings of your study. 7. It would need to be better discussed if you want to keep the manuscript with this structure and the objective that you said.

Authors’ response: As mentioned before, the objective of the manuscript differs and is not so much about the integration of ES values in forest management and decision-making but about finding out if it is in general possible and meaningful to use existing estimates for ES to inform forest management. We have thus, according to your suggestion, better focused the manuscript on ES values based on BT.

8. Paragraph 3.6: I understand the difficulties of analysis such as trying to group valuations in a logic and useful way, but it seems that you are saying that you have find no way to analyse properly your data… that’s not so much intriguing for the reader.

Authors’ response: This is a good comment, thank you. Due to this, we moved this section to the beginning of the discussion and described better, how we tried to reduce the variability of the ES values found. We hope that it becomes now clearer that integrating existing values into forest management and decision-making is quite challenging but is becoming increasingly important.

9. Lines 419-422: “It turned out that no underlying pattern concerning the distribution of values for single forest ES can be found – neither regional differences, nor the valued service nor the applied valuation method can explain the wide range of values. Nevertheless, valuing ES seems to be a promising way of making the different ES comparable and give a kind of orientation line to facilitate decision making processes.” This is a bit contradictory, I can’t find the logic between the two sentences. You say that, despite all the efforts made to analyse the data, there is not an underlying pattern describing the distribution of values, BUT (and I miss here the point) valuing ES seems promising for make comparison. Can you explain how you arrive to this conclusion from the results obtained from your study (that, to me, seems very discouraging)?

Authors’ response: We are grateful for this important comment and have recognized that our text was phrased in a contradictory way. We have now rephrased this paragraph explaining that, although a ‘value transfer’ is not feasible in most cases, valuing ES by primary studies in a specific region seems to be a promising way of making the different ES comparable, thereby facilitating decision-making processes in that specific area. However, when it comes to transferring values to other regions, a basic requirement is the similarity of background conditions. Our results show that the transfer of specific values is hardly possible, given that the scale, dimension and perspective of valuation studies widely differ. This makes a transfer of concrete values to a specific forest enterprise or even stand level unfeasible (lines 533 ff.).

10. Lines 426-433: “Provided that the above mentioned requirements are fulfilled, BT offers an opportunity for researchers and policy-makers facing time and budget constraints [62]and can help to design policies to improve future changes, e.g., offering a spectrum of possibilities and different scenarios [63]. BT can help prioritize practical actions and develop financial instruments like incentives or financial support mechanisms [62]. Furthermore, the economic valuation of forest ES is a helpful tool to raise awareness showing that they are appreciated by the population but also that their provision generates costs. Comparing costs and benefits of different forest management alternatives could be a basis for welfare-improving decisions related to the provisioning of ES.” But nothing of this can be deduced from your result, this is not your conclusion, these are results from other (different) studies… Otherwise, you should provide argumentation about how, actually, your results help to design policies, or to compare forest management alternatives that help inform decisions.

 Authors’ response:

Similar to comment 9, we recognize the insufficient clarity of our text. We have now adapted the text, emphasizing that “A more expedient approach might be function transfer. Provided that the above-mentioned requirements for a function transfer are fulfilled, BT offers an opportunity for researchers and policy-makers facing time and budget constraints [62] and can contribute to the design of policies that improve future developments, e.g., offering a spectrum of possibilities and different scenarios [63]. Function transfer uses a value function, which considers important variables that influence the value of an ES. It can be based on meta-analyses or on preference functions estimated for specific sites.  In this way, a monetary valuation based on BT can help to prioritize practical actions and develop financial instruments like incentives or financial support mechanisms

11. Lines 435-437: “In conclusion, the economic valuation of forest ecosystem services can be a helpful approach to improve management decisions by making forest ES comparable, even if dealing with several challenges and uncertainties.” Again, I would like to read a solid explanation about how and why you conclude that economic valuation can be helpful to make ES values comparable, based on your study.

Authors’ response: Our bottom line is that economic valuation of forest ecosystem services can be a helpful approach to improve management decisions by making forest ES comparable in a specific region or case study area. However, when it comes to transferring values many problems arise so that a transfer of concrete values to a specific forest enterprise or even stand level is unfeasible. We have now clarified this point in the text (lines 533 ff.).

12. Lines 438 until the end: If these are the aspects that make the economic valuation from secondary analyses an interesting methodology, I think they should be better argued more extensively in order to convince the reader.

Authors’ response: We have now rephrased the text to make our findings clearer, namely that valuation results of primary studies can provide useful information for comparison and decision making in the study area. However, based on our findings, their possible contribution to secondary analyses is rather limited and BT is often restricted to function transfer, in case specific conditions are fulfilled (lines 557ff.).

13. The final impression is that other results -more encouraging- were expected, but then many issues arise during the analysis of the data and you didn’t find the proper way to analyse them in order to get useful information (maybe you simply cannot).

To my point of view, it looks that your results do not support the conclusion that economic valuation of ES are promising for make comparison, at all. I am not saying that it is not true, but that this cannot be inferred from the results presented in this study. So you have to reformulate your conclusion, or try another way to analyse your data or change the initial aims.

Authors’ response: The objective of the study is different from what could be expected from the title and the first version. As already mentioned it is rather meant to be an analysis of whether ecosystem service values can per se inform forest management and less how these values can be integrated into planning and decision-making processes. We hope that we have made this clearer now.

Round  2

Reviewer 1 Report

Congratulations to the authors. I think that the paper its much better now. 

I dont any more comments to add.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, I think you made a great effort to adapt the manuscript to the new version presented here, and that it results in a more appropriate study; also the tile fits better to the scope.