Toward Forests’ Sustainability and Multifunctionality: An Ecosystem Services-Based Project

Abstract

The multiple functions and potential uses of forests have triggered an enormous interest, including their essential function as a carbon sink and protection of unstable soils, and have fostered significant investment in reforestation in Europe. Besides woody products, forests provide multiple functions and services vital to the environment, society, and well-being. Therefore, stakeholders should commit to a management approach that maintains or promotes biodiversity and forest ecosystems’ resilience. Driven by market forces, EU and national policies on climate change adaptation, and community resilience, the demand for forest products and ecosystem services will increase in the future. These actions will almost inevitably lead to an increase in forest ecosystems’ susceptibility to environmental and human-made disturbances such as storms, fires, droughts, invasive species or pests, and diseases, contributing altogether to a higher vulnerability to climate change. This chapter provides an overview of the research project MultiForest: The Multifunctionality of the Forest – Potential and Valorization of Goods and Services of Portuguese Forest Ecosystems, which aims to assess the potential of Portuguese forest ecosystems in terms of (endogenous) natural resources and the provision of ecosystem services. This project, funded by the national 2020 Rural Development Programme (Portugal), pursues to look at Portuguese forests holistically, following an ecosystem services-based approach. Project’s approach is based on the Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystem Services (MAES) methodology widely used in the European Union, adapted to the national and local territorial contexts where the study is performed. According to the MAES framework, suitable indicators used to evaluate the pressures that affect ecosystems and those to assess their condition (quality) must follow some criteria. This explanation deserves particular attention and is included in the chapter. Given the importance of a sustainable and multifunctional management of Portuguese forests, this chapter also provides several recommendations regarding forestry practices for fostering ecosystem services and biodiversity, deemed most relevant and urgent to implement. The modelling of ecosystem services is now a crucial issue for decision-making, and the accessibility of these modelling tools is increasing. In this respect, this chapter introduces three open-source software commonly used in modelling all types of services (provisioning, regulating and supporting, and cultural), with spatially explicit outputs and allowing a functional interconnection with other types of software and thematic areas such as geographic information systems or life cycle analysis. This project will help design policy responses and sustainable regional and local management strategies toward increased forests’ intrinsic and economic value while considering forests’ sustainability and multifunctionality and key pathways to meet the new European Union Forest Strategy goals.