Publications

Managing a complex social-ecological system requires data about the many social and ecological variables characterizing it and about their interactions. While the selection of research topics has its own, mostly unpredictable dynamics and contingencies, there has been a recent surge of interest regarding the involvement of non-academic stakeholders in suggesting research topics and identifying perceived knowledge gaps regarding the management of complex social-ecological systems. Decision-makers will invariably be confronted with limitations regarding resources to be allocated to the study of various systems components, and regarding the processing capacity of scientists and other stakeholders alike. Matang forest is one of the longest-managed mangroves in the world and provides a widely cited example of silvicultural management for charcoal and pole production, while providing a range of other ecosystem services. We applied the nominal group technique (NGT) to identify research priorities for Matang, as it provides a systematic and participatory approach to identify collective priorities while also reducing bias. The method consists of two rounds, during which participants were asked to reflect first individually, and then collectively, about key characteristics of mangrove management and about research priorities in Matang. The results were compared to the recommendations of the scientific literature. NGT provides a rapid, robust and systematic approach to identify research priorities for mangrove management and can hence be a timely method to support decision-makers across South-East Asia in guiding resource allocation toward research needs in times of increasing mangrove degradation. This is the first time that the application of NGT has been documented in a mangrove context. Moreover, NGT is not yet being used frequently in natural resources management, hence in documenting our NGT application, we aim to contribute to the development of a the NGT body of knowledge beyond mere mangrove forest settings. Rapid methods (such as NGT) to identify pressing research priorities are needed to guide resource allocation and investment of time and scientific capacity based on a systematic and pluralistic assessment. © 2022, The Author(s).

Climatic factors drive the annual growth of cork and the subsequent increase in its thickness, which, in addition to porosity, determines the price of cork. Therefore, the simulation of cork thickness is a crucial module of forest growth simulators for cork oak stands. As the existing cork growth models are independent of climatic factors, cork thickness under different climate change scenarios could not be simulated using these models. The primary objective of this study was to develop a climate-dependent tree model to predict annual cork growth. We also verified the hypothesis that the effects of climate change on cork annual growth are nonlinear, and vary with the cork age and thickness. Due to the limited amount of work developed around this topic, we evaluated three candidate models and selected the one that presented best prediction performance as the base model. A set of climate variables that characterized annual climatic conditions were tested in the base model parameters. The resulting climate-dependent model was referred to as the fixed-effects model, and used to initialize a mixed-effect model which accounted for the nested structure of the data. We considered two random effects—the plot and the trees inside the plot. Annual precipitation and the Lang index (ratio between annual precipitation and mean annual temperature) were the variables that showed best results when included in the model parameters. Using a ratio of the variable to cork thickness recorded during the previous year, in both cases, suggested a decline of the positive effect of annual precipitation and the Lang index for increasing cork thickness. The models developed in this study predicted the cork thickness of individual trees based on the cork age and under different climate change scenarios. Therefore, they can be used in forest growth simulators for forest management and research purposes. © 2023, The Author(s).

Maps of soil pH are an important tool for making decisions in sustainable forest management. Accurate pH mapping, therefore, is crucial to support decisions by authorities or forest companies. Soil pH values typically exhibit a distinct distribution characterized by two frequently encountered pH ranges, wherein aluminium oxides (Al2O3) and carbonates (CaCO3) act as the primary buffer agents. Soil samples with moderately acid pH values (pH CaCl2 of 4.5-6) are less commonly observed due to their weaker buffering capacity. The different strength of buffer agents results in a distinct bimodal distribution of soil pH values with peaks at pH of around 4 and 7.5. Commonly used approaches for spatial mapping neglect this often observed characteristic of soil pH and predict unimodal distributions with too many moderately acid pH values. For ecological map applications this might result in misleading interpretations. This article presents a novel approach to produce pH maps that are able to reproduce pedogenic processes. The procedure is suitable for bimodal responses where the response distribution is naturally inherent and needs to be reproduced for the predictions. It is model-agnostic, namely independent from the used statistical prediction method. Calibration data is optimally split into two parts corresponding each to a data culmination, i.e. for soil pH values belonging to the ranges of the two principal buffer agents (Al2O3 and CaCO3). For each subset a separate model is then built. In addition, a binary model is fitted to assign every new prediction location a probability to belong either to Al2O3 or CaCO3 buffer range. Predictions are combined by weighted mean. Weights are derived from probabilities predicted by the binary model. Degree of smoothness is chosen by sigmoid transform which allows for optimal continuous transition of the pH values between Al2O3 and CaCO3 buffer ranges. For each location uncertainty distributions may be combined by using the same weights. We illustrated application of the new approach to a medium and strong bimodal distributed response (1) pH in 0–5 cm and (2) pH in 60–100 cm of forest soils in Switzerland (2 530 calibration sites). While model performance measured at 354 validation sites slightly dropped compared to a common modelling approach (drop of R2 of 0.02–0.03) distributional properties of the predictions are much more meaningful from a pedogenic point of view. We were able to demonstrate the benefits of considering specific distributional properties of responses within the prediction process and expanded model assessment by comparing observed and predicted distributions. © 2023 The Author(s)

Addressing the spatio-temporal dynamics of forest development under different management scenarios with varying rotation lengths is a challenge in forest management planning. This research aims to forecast forest development and assess the relative consequences of varying rotation lengths on several ecosystem services such as wood production, habitat for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, water provision, soil protection and cultural values. Forest development is simulated with the ETCAP model to examine the long-term effects of various rotation lengths with silvicultural prescriptions on the ecosystem services. Bürücek forest planning unit is used as a case study area with 10,711 ha forests in upper Mediterranean region of Turkey. Shorter rotation lengths are considered one of the main mitigation measures to climate changes in forestry; however, lead to the increased harvest level, net present value, ground water and soil loss, and reductions in the largest stand volume, understory, basal area, carbon storage and the cultural values with less regulated forest structure. The management scenarios with longer rotation lengths, however, have highlighted improvements in the carbon storage, larger standing volume, mean stand age, basal area and cultural values, and reductions in the mean harvest volume, net present value, ground water and soil loss due to larger-even distribution of tree sizes and stand development stages. An aspiration for a higher level of provisioning services for economic motivations may need to be discarded for the sake of enhancing the capacity of forest ecosystems to sequester more carbon and provide better habitat condition for biodiversity conservation with a careful design and selection of rotation lengths. Overall, the choice of optimal rotation length is highly dependent on a desired set of management objectives and target forest structure driven mostly by management interventions with the appropriate type and level of ecosystem services, provided that a thorough understanding of forest dynamics is achieved by considering both risks and uncertainties associated with natural disturbances and socio-economic conditions. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.

Many of the intrinsic facets of forest planning are surrounded by uncertainty. Decision-makers strive to improve their understanding of the sources of uncertainty and their impact on the decision-making process. However, uncertainty is rarely integrated into real-world forestry applications or into decision support tools used in forest planning problems. To identify the needs, interests, and challenges of managing uncertainty in forest planning,we interviewed forestry professionals. All the interviewees indicated the positive potential of a tool that could address some facets of uncertainty. Additionally, we conducted a review of themost recent literature on this topic to understand current hot topics and future trends that could help address realworld challenges. This study highlights the next steps to incorporate uncertainty into the decision support systems for forest planning.However, to strengthen the bond between the practical needs of forestry professionals and the theoretical approaches proposed by recent literature, more effort should be placed on defining terminology and formulating a theoretical framework for uncertainty analysis. This will provide the forestry community with a common language and typology, help increase its general understanding, and improve communication between forestry researchers, forestry professionals, and other stakeholders. © 2023, Canadian Science Publishing. All rights reserved.

The adoption of nature-based solutions, such as forests, is playing an increasingly important role in risk analysis and related decision-making. However, decision-makers struggle to put a value on the services provided by these solutions, as there is no reference market, and are thus faced with several challenges, which relate to the choice of the best forest management program or the interventions needed to make a forest resistant and resilient to the expected negative impacts of ongoing climate change. In this article, we started with an exploratory analysis to identify the key factors in the choice of an economic method to build predictive models to support the choice in an evaluation of the forest protection service against natural hazards. The exploratory analysis showed that non-demand-based methods have a good degree of replicability and reliability and are cheaper, whereas stated preference methods can estimate the intangible component. Concerning predictive models, almost all methods showed a high level of correct classification (95%), apart from the avoided damages method (90%) and, more generally, there is no method that is valid for all operational contexts but rather the choice changes depend on the demands made by the stakeholders and their availability in economic, human, and technological terms. In conclusion, it should be remembered that the methodological framework chosen should not be seen as a substitute for the human ability to analyze complex situations but rather as an aid to this process. Study Implications: The adoption of decision support systems and methodological frameworks and guidelines can help decision-makers to make the most effective and efficient choices, in terms of time needed, resources used, and intervention costs. The combination of this decision support system with other tools, such as frameworks and guidelines, provides a flexible support system aimed at improving the design and implementation of future ecosystem service assessments and management as well as related decision-making. © 2023 The Author(s).

Spatial and temporal variation in fire characteristics—termed pyrodiversity—are increasingly recognized as important factors that structure wildlife communities in fire-prone ecosystems, yet there have been few attempts to incorporate pyrodiversity or post-fire habitat dynamics into predictive models of animal distributions and abundance to support post-fire management. We use the black-backed woodpecker—a species associated with burned forests—as a case study to demonstrate a pathway for incorporating pyrodiversity into wildlife habitat assessments for adaptive management. Employing monitoring data (2009–2019) from post-fire forests in California, we developed three competing occupancy models describing different hypotheses for habitat associations: (1) a static model representing an existing management tool, (2) a temporal model accounting for years since fire, and (3) a temporal–landscape model which additionally incorporates emerging evidence from field studies about the influence of pyrodiversity. Evaluating predictive ability, we found superior support for the temporal–landscape model, which showed a positive relationship between occupancy and pyrodiversity and interactions between habitat associations and years since fire. We incorporated the new temporal–landscape model into an RShiny application to make this decision-support tool accessible to decision-makers. © 2023 The Ecological Society of America. This article has been contributed to by U.S. Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.

Natural disturbances have increased the extent of forest damage in recent decades and influenced the share of salvage logging and forest management practices in many European countries. These challenges have a significant impact on private forest owners, as 56% of all forestland in Europe is privately owned. The current study researched barriers to salvage logging in private forests in a three-phase framework. First, barriers were identified by conducting a literature review, and they were critically reviewed by experts. In the second phase, stakeholders were selected, and in the third phase, they evaluated barriers using the multicriteria decision-making, best-worst method. The developed framework was applied in the case of Slovenian private forest management. According to the stakeholders, the most important group of barriers consists of organizational and logistical factors, while the most important individual barrier is the organization of logging and skidding. It is expected that this framework can contribute to finding appropriate solutions that meet stakeholders’ expectations and that are very helpful and important in removing barriers to the efficiency of salvage logging in private forests. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Background: Increasing carbon stock in standing forests is one of the proposed ways to mitigate climate change. However, in production forests, this typically would lead to reduced harvesting possibilities and thus reduced financial gain for the forest owners. The size of this reduction should depend on the chosen target level of the carbon stock as well as the required speed of accumulation. Furthermore, due to landscape heterogeneity, the size of the loss can be expected to vary the planning scale, often related to forest property size. Aim: This study aimed to quantify the effects of spatial and temporal planning scales on the severity of the trade-off between Net Present Value (NPV) of future timber sales and carbon storage in production forests in Southern Sweden. Methods: We used the Heureka PlanWise forest decision support system with built-in Linear Programming functionality. We created six Production Possibility Frontiers (PPF) that quantified the trade-off for the combinations of two scenarios for timing of carbon accumulation (either by 2100 or by 2100 with an intermediate target by 2045) and three spatial management scales (∼3300 ha, ∼300 ha, and ∼60 ha; 1068 stands). Results: There was a strong effect of temporal scale, with consistently lower NPV, with the same carbon stock in 2100, when the intermediate target for 2045 was applied. The effect of the spatial scale was only apparent between the smallest (50 ha) scale and the larger scales (300 and 3300 ha), with consistently lower NPV with the same carbon stock at the smallest scale. Conclusion: We conclude that both the effects of spatial management scale and temporal scale on the cost of carbon storage should be considered in relation to potential climate policies. © 2023 The Authors

Background: This article aims to provide information on the diameter distribution of naturally regenerated forests of Taurus cedar (Cedrus libani A. Rich), a tree species endemic in the mountains of the Eastern Mediterranean basin and assess their prediction ability with the Johnson SB distribution. Previous research attested to the flexibility of Johnson family distributions to mimic empirical diameter data for a large set of tree species, justifying its use for the case study. A set of 134 plots (400 m2) were sampled in the most represented areas of the distribution of the species in Türkiye and diameter at breast height was measured in all the living trees. The cedar forests displayed heterogeneous diameter structures with diameters range from 10 to 116 cm and irregular shapes (e.g. unimodal, bell-shaped, left-and right-skewed, and non-uniform). Over three-quarters of the empirical diameter distributions (104 sample plots) were classified as SB distribution. The remaining were classified as bounded at the lower end, SL (16) or unbounded, SU (14). The authors essayed the 3-parameter and 4-parameter recovery methods after Parresol and Fonseca and other´s fundamental studies. The 3-parameter recovery method outperformed the 4-parameter method in the convergence criterion and error index (EI) expressed in the basal area. Results: Results show that the Johnson SB distribution can adequately reproduce the high variability in diameter for most of the distributions observed in these natural forests, providing reliable estimates which can serve as a basis for decision support systems. Conclusion: The SB distribution can represent the diameter distributions of natural cedar forests, even if the empirical distributions are not in the region covered by this distribution. © 2023, Federal University of Lavras. All rights reserved.