Ecosystem Services Modelling, Assessment and Management under Changing Environment

Dear Colleagues,

Ecosystem services—the benefits (goods and services) provided to humans by a natural ecosystem—are likely to be impacted in various ecological systems across the world. This is partly due to climate change and likely to be compounded by many other factors, such as land use and land cover change, land use intensification, lack of robust modeling, assessment and management approach, absence of robust policy initiative, and community consultation. However, many ecosystem services are extremely important for human wellbeing, such as climate regulation (atmospheric carbon sequestration), water purification, habitat provision for biodiversity, clean air, agricultural production, water provision, etc. Thus, the sustained supply of ecosystem services is paramount to ensure human wellbeing, and even more important in the aftermath of the current global pandemic (COVID-19). To ensure sustainable production and supply of ecosystem services, it is essential to have appropriate management strategies in place, which should be driven by robust modeling and assessment and implementable in practice at scales and times. As ecosystem services are the products of complex interactions between ecological processes and the environment, the assessment and modeling should take into account a wide range of factors, including climate change, land use and land cover change, community perceptions, ecological interaction, diversity and tradeoffs, etc. This Special Issue aims to explore management strategies, modeling, and assessment approaches to ensure sustainable production and supply of ecosystem services in various aspects, including but not limited to:

• Climate change scenarios;
• Adaptation and mitigation to climate change;
• Land use and land cover change;
• Stakeholder engagement;
• Indigenous/local knowledge;
• Human exposure to global pandemic (such as COVID-19) and ecosystem services;
• Socioecological modeling;
• Spatial assessment;
• Ecological interaction and trade-offs;
• Ecosystem services production, supply and flow;
• Community perception;
• Sustainability indicators and analysis in line with ecosystem services;
• Ecosystem services assessment at scales;
• Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and ecosystem services.

In short, the vision of this issue is to promote innovative modeling and assessment of ecosystem services, and hence sustainable strategies to ensure sustained supply of ecosystem services for human wellbeing.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Sustainability.

Dr. Mohammed Alamgir
Guest Editor

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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. World is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly 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 1000 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.

• climate change
• modeling and assessment
• community perceptions
• supply
• interaction
• innovative strategies