Non-market forest ecosystem services and decision support in Nordic countries

ABSTRACT

The need to integrate non-market ecosystem services into decision-making is widely acknowledged. Despite the exponentially growing body of literature, trade-offs between services are still poorly understood. We conducted a systematic review of published literature in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland) on the integration of non-market forest ecosystem services into decision-making. The aim of the review was two-fold: (1) to provide an overview of coverage of biophysical and socio-economic assessments of non-market ecosystem services in relation to forest management; (2) to determine the extent of the integration of biophysical and socio-economic models of these services into decision support models. Our findings reveal the need for wider coverage of non-market ecosystem services and evidence-based modelling of how forest management regimes affect ecosystem services. Furthermore, temporal and spatial modelling of ecosystem impacts remains a challenge. We observed a few examples of multiple non-market services assessments. Integration of non-market services into decision support was performed with either biophysical or socio-economic models, often using proxies and composite indicators. The review reveals that there is scope for more comprehensive and integrated model development, including multiple ecosystem services and appropriate handling of forest management impacts.

KEYWORDS:

• Ecosystem services
• trade-offs
• valuation
• decision support
• forest management
• review

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted as part of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctoral Programme, “Forests and Nature for Society”, which is funded by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission under Erasmus Mundus Action 1. The authors would like to thank the Danish National Research Foundation for providing economic support of the Center of Macroecology, Evolution and Climate. We also would like to thank Stuart Wright from Wright's Language Consultancy for language editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at 10.1080/02827581.2015.1079643