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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.

Developments in the past 20 years have changed both the context and the goals of forest management in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in general and Slovakia in particular. One might therefore wonder if introduced “integrative” forestry paradigms on the national level are able to provide assimilation of different forest management claims and what are the drivers behind these developments. Analysis of forest management and its context therefore requires a multilevel approach including decision-making at higher institutional levels down to the decisions of local natural resources users. In this paper, we use a politicized Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework that can link various institutional levels and allows for the simultaneous evaluation of a broad context of forest management decision-making and its outcome. The research problem is addressed by means of case studies and a qualitative methodology. The results of 50 in-depth interviews with forest managers, owners, and other actors revealed that both the role of power and institutional setup are the core drivers of the socioecological outcome. Although the behavior and relationship of forest managers and owners in various networks vary, it is against this background that distinct forest management approaches are employed. Each approach delivers a similar set of ecosystem services. As timber is the main source of income, the provisioning services have primary importance. Thus, an integration of various forest management claims is challenging due to current forestry paradigms and the amount of resources available.

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.

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