Economic Research on Forest Ecosystem Services

Dear Colleagues,

The valuation of market and non-market benefits society obtains from nature has been present as an important concept to manage natural environments in a more sustainable way for the last fifty years. In this context, the ES framework, developed after the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, has provided an advantageous way to conceptualize, quantify and value the different ways society benefits from natural capital. Many approaches to quantify and value ES have been developed so far; however, there is still debate on the adequacy of some of these approaches and their suitability to approach the valuation problem in specific circumstances. Part of the debate resides on the different uses and values society gives to those ES, the stage of the use of those products of services, the likely double counting of services, the temporality of the value approximated given the dynamics of the ecosystems, the geographical unit (scale) taken as reference to the valuation of some ES, or even the precision of the definition of the referred service, as is the case with some cultural services or, more broadly, the less tangible ecosystem services on which we depend.

Current developments in ES valuation identify the need to value forest goods and services from colective, transdisciplinary, local and dynamic perspectives in order to provide information to generate and support decisions and policies in complex areas under dynamic scenarios of climate change, loss of biodiversity, market volatility and changes in the preferences of stakeholders. From the methodological side, current research lines include valuations considering both costs and benefits trade-offs and multiple uses of ecosystem goods and/or services considering, their role in defining the economic, social and cultural development of society. Such developments also consider the endogeneity of the effects of society and nature.

The outputs of this Special Issue will be very helpful in order to identify likely conceptual, methodological and practical approaches to improve the value of ES and try to guide the discussion to solve the current debate on the valuation of ES.

The Special Issue aims to attract and review papers covering the most recent topics on ecosystem services valuation from methodological and practical perspectives. There is no restriction on the maximum length of the papers. We encourage scientists to publish their research in as much detail as possible.

Potential topics include:

• Practical uses of valuation in forest management;
• Valuation of forest non-market goods and services;
• Challenges in the valuation of forest ES;
• Valuation of the dynamics of change in ES and factors affecting them;
• Identification of boundaries on values depending on the use of ES;
• Innovative methodological approaches;
• Transversality of the valuation;
• Diversity of interests and values of different stakeholders;
• Valuation of environmental catastrophes on the provision of ecosystem services.

Dr. Juan Manuel Torres-Rojo
Dr. Adan L. Martinez-Cruz
Prof. Dr. Gustavo Perez-Verdin
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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. Forests 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.

• non-market valuation
• nature-based solution valuation
• valuation of changes in ecosystem services
• transversality of valuation