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

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

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