Ecosystem services from forest landscapes: Broadscale considerations

A PERERA; U PETERSON; G MARTÍNEZ PASTUR; L IVERSON

Springer

Lugar: Cham; Año: 2018 p. 265

978-3-319-74514-5

Nearly 200 researchers gathered in Tartu, Estonia during August 23-30, 2015 under the sponsorship of IUFRO working party on landscape ecology to discuss the topic ?sustaining ecosystem services from forest landscapes?. The theme ?ecosystem services? has become globally popular during the last two decades, drawing attention from researchers, land managers, and policy makers. The ecosystems addressed thus include an array of aquatic and terrestrial systems including oceans, lakes, rivers, wetlands, grasslands, forests, croplands, and urban areas. Their services also include a long list, ranging from intrinsic to anthropocentric benefits that can be grouped as provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural. The research efforts, assessments, and attempts to manage ecosystems for their sustained services are now widely published in scientific literature. This text is a contribution to that body of growing knowledge of ecosystem services, from the perspective of forest ecosystems in the temperate and boreal regions. In particular, we attempt to highlight the broader-scale aspects of ecosystem services from forests, beyond individual stands across to large landscapes. Presentations and exchanges focused on many aspects of sustaining ecosystems services from forest landscapes, e.g., mapping technologies, spatial patterns, planning approaches, management strategies, challenges and opportunities, conserving biodiversity, and cultural and aesthetic values. A key theme that emerged from the proceedings was the necessity to broaden extend the scope of planning horizon towards a broader, landscape-scale perspective. Even though this approach is complex and involves socio-economic issues having important policy implications, the landscape-scale appears to offer the best opportunity for sustained provision of ecosystem services. Our endeavour here is not an exhaustive literature review or a comprehensive assessment of the state-of-knowledge in ecosystem services from forest landscapes. It rather is a compilation of keynote presentations and syntheses of symposia of the Tartu meeting, focusing on broad-scale aspects of forest ecosystem services. This volume is composed of nine chapters. It begins with a brief introduction to ecosystem services from forest landscapes to provide a topical overview and describe the terminology. The next two chapters draw attention to two relatively lesser known regulatory services from forest ecosystems that have broad broad-scale connotations. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 address the complexities and multiple issues that are associated with attempts to sustain forest ecosystem services across large landscapes and across multiple administrative and political boundaries ? both local and international. Chapter 7 and 8 focus on practical and conceptual aspects deriving ecosystem services from forest landscapes. The concluding chapter summarizes the overall contents and emergent messages of the book and offers some thoughts for future research and applications. We hope that the readers of this book, especially the developers of scientific knowledge and those who apply that knowledge through policy development and land management, will benefit from this discourse. The geographical scope of this book is primarily focused on temperate forest landscapes, and the array of case studies and topics discussed here is by no means globally exhaustive. But we anticipate this volume to offer useful insights to readers from other geographies as well as those focusing on services from non-forested ecosystems. In particular, the various concepts, questions, issues, and solutions that transcend individual ecosystems and scales throughout the globe are, we believe, valuable contributions to the overall endeavor to expand our knowledge of this important topic. Finally, we are indebted to the colleagues who critically reviewed chapter manuscripts and offered suggestions for improvements: Mariano Amoroso, Peter Besseau, Juan Manuel Cellini, Guy Chiasson, Trevor F. Keenan, Timo Kuuluvainen, Lars Laestadius , Silvia Matteucci, Sergio Menéndez, Josep Peñuelas, Chris J. Peterson, Sanna-Riikka Saarela, Andreas Schindlbacher, Ayanda Sigwela, and Susan Smith. Their critique helped us improve the veracity and clarity of messages in this text. We also acknowledge the assistance of Andrea Sandell, and Janet Slobodien of Springer New York in guiding us through the publication process.