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Scenarios modelling offers to forest management an option how to envision complex future associated with various natural, social, or economic uncertainties. The challenge is what modelling method to choose as many methodological approaches to scenario building exists. Morphological analysis is a basic modelling method for structuring and analysing a whole set of relationships existing in multi-dimensional, non-quantifiable, and complex topics. Especially, its application is relevant when abstract policy or market-driven challenges need to be investigated. In this study, we demonstrated the usefulness of the morphological analysis with an example case taken from forest management in Slovakia. The use of the method has enabled, from a number of uncertain futures, to identify three possible, plausible and consistent future scenarios of possible forest management direction in the regions of Podpoľanie and Kysuce. Additionally, the future scenario modelling as prognostic method of qualitative research supported by quantitative models or forestry DSS could introduce participation and more dimensions into forest management modelling. Thus, the future scenarios modelling offers new methodological possibilities to how to deal with increasing uncertainties associated with increasing demands for various ecosystem services or negative impacts of climate change, that forest management in Slovakia will face in the near future.

Sustainable forest management is driving the development of forest decision support systems (DSSs) to include models and methods concerned with climate change, biodiversity and various ecosystem services (ESs). The future development of forest landscapes is very much dependent on how forest owners act and what goes on in the wider world; thus, models are needed that incorporate these aspects. The objective of this study is to assess how nine European state-of-the-art forest DSSs cope with these issues. The assessment focuses on the ability of these DSSs to generate landscape-level scenarios to explore the output of current and alternative forest management models (FMMs) in terms of a range of ESs and the robustness of these FMMs in the face of increased risks and uncertainty. Results show that all DSSs assessed in this study can be used to quantify the impacts of both stand- and landscape-level FMMs on the provision of a range of ESs over a typical planning horizon. DSSs can be used to assess how timber price trends may impact that provision over time. The inclusion of forest owner behavior as reflected by the adoption of specific FMMs seems to be also in the reach of all DSSs. Nevertheless, some DSSs need more data and development of models to estimate the impacts of climate change on biomass production and other ESs. Spatial analysis functionality needs to be further developed for a more accurate assessment of the landscape-level output of ESs from both current and alternative FMMs. European Commission Horizon 2020 Portuguese Science Foundation

The paper presents an application of structural analysis in search of key drivers and barriers of forest management in two Slovak regions: Podpoľanie and Kysuce. A comparison with factors identified in selected European regions is also presented. First, various relevant factors affecting forest management were selected for both regions. The selections draw on the pool of primary data (structured in-person interviews) and secondary data (qualitative analysis of national and European documents). Second, factors were grouped according to the STEEP categories (Society, Technology, Economy, Ecology, and Policy). Subsequently, factors were rigorously assessed by the regional stakeholders in participatory workshops, and their answers were analysed by structural analysis with the help of Parmenides EIDOS™ software. The results show that in both Slovak regions political, economic, and ecological factors dominated over social and technological factors. The comparison with selected European regions revealed that in the Slovak and other European regions, the Policy category dominated due to having the highest number of factors and their overall impact on forest management. In contrast, the least important societal domain was Technology in both the Slovak and other European regions. However, while stakeholders across the selected European regions perceived the Society domain as significant, stakeholders in both Slovak regions perceived the Economy and Ecology domains as more significant.

Sustainability and the optimal provision of the various ecosystem services is an essential task in forest management. In this study, we deal with the optimization of forest tending to achieve the maximal long-term provision of financial incomes from wood at a minimal level of ecological risks for selected small ownership unit. The methods of interactive decision maps and reasonable goals (IDM/RGM) were connected with a modern forest growth simulator to investigate the four-dimensional optimization space and to produce the complete set of Pareto optimal solutions. The four different types of forest owners as potential decision-makers were simulated, and precise management goals in multidimensional target space were defined. Then, the optimal tending system for each forest owner in three stands, differing by the degree of the naturalness of the species composition, was detected. The multi-criteria analysis suggests that predominantly economically oriented forest management still prevails in the Czech and Slovak Republics, which can be as a source of conflicts among forest owners and other stakeholders. The existence of trade-offs between biodiversity, ecological stability and wood production and different owners&rsquo, demands must be taken into account. The possibility of balancing the management risks and wood provision according to the owner&rsquo, s and other stakeholders&rsquo, demands with the aid of the easy-to-apply IDM/RGM methods (and the careful assistance of a specialist experienced in multi-criteria optimization) was introduced. At the same time, the application of real integrative management in small forest areas was demonstrated in practice. After the change of paradigm in forest management, the applied methods should prevent increasing conflicts among owners and society in former socialist countries, which have undergone a fundamental transformation in terms of forest ownership in recent decades.

For forest sustainability and vulnerability assessment, the landscape scale is considered to be more and more relevant as the stand level approaches its known limitations. This review, which describes the main forest landscape simulation tools used in the 20 European case studies of the European project “Future-oriented integrated management of European forest landscapes” (INTEGRAL), gives an update on existing decision support tools to run landscape simulation from Mediterranean to boreal ecosystems. The main growth models and software available in Europe are described, and the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches are discussed. Trades-offs between input efforts and output are illustrated. Recommendations for the selection of a forest landscape simulator are given. The paper concludes by describing the need to have tools that are able to cope with climate change and the need to build more robust indicators for assessment of forest landscape sustainability and vulnerability. The INTEGRAL project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement No. 282887. http://www. integral-project.eu/. Moreover, financial support by the Transnational Access to Research Infrastructures activity in the 7th Framework Programme of the EC under the Trees4Future project (No. 284181) for conducting the research is gratefully acknowledged. This research has also received funding from the European Union H2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 691149 (SuFoRun). Researcher Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo was supported by a “Ramon y Cajal” research contract from the MINECO (Ref. RYC-2013-14262) and has received funding from CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya. This paper could be achieved thanks to support of EFIATLANTIC donors: Conseil regional d’Aquitaine, Ministère de l’agriculture et de la forêt.

While sustainable forestry in Europe is characterized by the provision of a multitude of forest ecosystem services, there exists no comprehensive study that scrutinizes their sensitivity to forest management on a pan-European scale, so far. We compile scenario runs from regionally tailored forest growth models and Decision Support Systems (DSS) from 20 case studies throughout Europe and analyze whether the ecosystem service provision depends on management intensity and other co-variables, comprising regional affiliation, social environment, and tree species composition. The simulation runs provide information about the case-specifically most important ecosystem services in terms of appropriate indicators. We found a strong positive correlation between management intensity and wood production, but only weak correlation with protective and socioeconomic forest functions. Interestingly, depending on the forest region, we found that biodiversity can react in both ways, positively and negatively, to increased management intensity. Thus, it may be in tradeoff or in synergy with wood production and forest resource maintenance. The covariables species composition and social environment are of punctual interest only, while the affiliation to a certain region often makes an important difference in terms of an ecosystem service’s treatment sensitivity info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

After a strong wind disturbance in the High Tatras Mountains National Park in November 2004, the problem of forest fire prevention has attracted much attention from our society. Under our conditions, forest fire is an undesirable phenomenon, damaging not only the forest ecosystem but also, if the fire spreads behind the forest borders, endangering the property and lives of people.