Forests as Nature-Based Solutions: Ecosystem Services, Multiple Benefits, and Trade-Offs—2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to present the second edition of the Special Issue on “Forests as Nature-Based Solutions: Ecosystem Services, Multiple Benefits, and Trade-Offs” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/special_issues/Y30ZDNE06N) that follows on from the success of the first edition, which comprised 10 articles. We look forward to receiving more high-quality contributions in this edition.

Nature-based Solutions (NbSs), as conceptualized by IUCN, are actions related to effective protection, sustainable management, and restoration efforts to recover degraded ecosystems, which in turn exhibit benefits for human well-being and the status of biodiversity. Thus, NbSs are suitable means to address various societal challenges, including climate change, biodiversity losses, decreases in productivity, water security, pest and disease risk, and challenges regarding non-sustainable materials.

NbSs are closely related to ecosystem services (ESs) as these solutions foster the natural capacity of ecosystems to provide ESs and thus leverage and enhance ESs. As such, NbSs rely on natural processes and ESs to address challenges rather than relying solely on artificial, engineered solutions. Forests, being one of the most preserved and relatively abundant natural ecosystems, have great potential to provide NbSs by, for example, sequestering carbon and mitigating climate change, regulating microclimates, decreasing the costs of cooling/heating, providing spaces for outdoor recreation, contributing to public health, providing wood as a building material and source of energy, providing soil cover and decreasing erosion rates, etc.

However, there exist several challenges regarding the implementation of NbSs in forestry, such as the tendency to prioritize economic outcomes as opposed to engineered solutions, the lack of awareness and understanding of the concept of NbS and the benefits they bring, policy and regulatory barriers, the professional expertise needed for implementing NbSs, information/data gaps regarding the ecological effectiveness of NbS, issues related to scale and replicability, etc.

We welcome papers that investigate those NbS-related challenges either (1) in the context of the ecological restoration, conservation, or enhancement of forests’ capacity to provide ESs or (2) as studies of stakeholders’ (e.g., forest owners and decision makers) perceptions, attitudes, and positions towards adapting/altering forest management to enhance the supply of ESs, or even (3) the preferences of the general public and businesses regarding the implementation of different NBS-related strategies, as they are commonly the ones who benefit from the increased provision of forest ESs.

Dr. Anže Japelj
Dr. Silvija Krajter Ostoić
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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