248 research outputs found
Ecosystem services auctions: the last decade of research
ReviewAuctions offer potential cost-effectiveness improvements over other mechanisms for
payments for ecosystem services (PES) contract allocation. However, evidence-based guidance for
matching design to application is scarce and research priorities are unclear. To take stock of the current
state of the art, we conducted a systematic review and thematic content analysis of 56 peer-reviewed
journal articles discussing ES auctions published in the last decade. Auctions were approached from
three overlapping perspectives: mechanism design, PES, and policy analysis. Five major themes
emerged: (1) performance, including measures like cost-effectiveness and PES criteria like additionality;
(2) information dynamics like price discovery and communication effects; (3) design innovations like
risk-integrating and spatially coordinated mechanisms; (4) contextual variables like policy context and
cultural values; and (5) participation factors. Additional attention from policymakers and continued
efforts to coordinate research in this diverse and interdisciplinary subfield may be beneficialinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Stand structural characteristics are the most practical biodiversity indicators for forest management planning in Europe
ReviewIncluding biodiversity assessments in forest management planning is becoming increasingly
important due to the importance of biodiversity for forest ecosystem resilience provision and
sustainable functioning. Here we investigated the potential to include biodiversity indicators
into forest management planning in Europe. In particular, we aimed to (i) identify biodiversity
indicators and data collection methods for biodiversity assessments at the stand and landscape levels,
and (ii) evaluate the practicality of those indicators for forest management planning. We performed
a literature review in which we screened 188 research studies published between 1990 and
2020. We selected 94 studies that fulfilled the inclusion criteria and examined in more detail.
We considered three aspects of biodiversity: structure, composition, and function, and four forest
management categories: unmanaged, managed, plantation, and silvopastoral. We used three criteria
to evaluate the practicality of forest biodiversity indicators: cost-e ectiveness, ease of application,
and time-e ectiveness. We identified di erences in the practicality of biodiversity indicators for their
incorporation into management plans. Stand-level indicators are more practical than landscape-level
indicators. Moreover, structural biodiversity indicators (e.g., large trees, canopy openness, and old
forest stands) are more useful in management plans than compositional indicators, as these are easily
observable by non-professionals and can be obtained by forest inventories. Compositional indicators
such are vascular plants, fungi, bryophyte, lichens, and invertebrate species are hard to identify
by non-professionals and thus are impractical. Functional indicators (e.g., nutrient cycling) are not
su ciently addressed in the literature. Using recently updated existing databases (e.g., national forest
inventories and bird atlases) is very time and cost-e cient. Remote sensing and other technology
(e.g., smartphone applications) are promising for e cient data collection in the future. However,
more research is needed to make these tools more accurate and applicable to a variety of ecological
conditions and scales. Until then, forest stand structural variables derived from inventories can help
improve management plans to prepare European forests towards an uncertain futureinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Combining decision support approaches for optimizing the selection of bundles of ecosystem services
This study examines the potential of combining decision support approaches to identify
optimal bundles of ecosystem services in a framework characterized by multiple decision-makers.
A forested landscape, Zona de Intervenção Florestal of Paiva and Entre-Douro and Sousa (ZIF_VS)
in Portugal, is used to test and demonstrate this potential. The landscape extends over 14,388 ha,
representing 1976 stands. The property is fragmented into 376 holdings. The overall analysis was
performed in three steps. First, we selected six alternative solutions (A to F) in a Pareto frontier
generated by a multiple-criteria method within a web-based decision support system (SADfLOR)
for subsequent analysis. Next, an aspatial strategic multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) was
performed with the Criterium DecisionPlus (CDP) component of the Ecosystem Management
Decision Support (EMDS) system to assess the aggregate performance of solutions A to F for the
entire forested landscape with respect to their utility for delivery of ecosystem services. For the CDP
analysis, SADfLOR data inputs were grouped into two sets of primary criteria: Wood Harvested and
Other Ecosystem Services. Finally, a spatial logic-based assessment of solutions A to F for individual
stands of the study area was performed with the NetWeaver component of EMDS. The NetWeaver
model was structurally and computationally equivalent to the CDP model, but the key NetWeaver
metric is a measure of the strength of evidence that solutions for specific stands were optimal for
the unit. We conclude with a discussion of how the combination of decision support approaches
encapsulated in the two systems could be further automated in order to rank several efficient solutions
in a Pareto frontier and generate a consensual solutioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
A Participatory and Spatial Multicriteria Decision Approach to Prioritize the Allocation of Ecosystem Services to Management Units
Forest management planning can be challenging when allocating multiple ecosystem
services (ESs) to management units (MUs), given the potentially conflicting management priorities of
actors. We developed a methodology to spatially allocate ESs to MUs, according to the objectives
of four interest groups—civil society, forest owners, market agents, and public administration. We
applied a Group Multicriteria Spatial Decision Support System approach, combining (a) Multicriteria
Decision Analysis to weight the decision models; (b) a focus group and a multicriteria Pareto
frontier method to negotiate a consensual solution for seven ESs; and (c) the Ecosystem Management
Decision Support (EMDS) system to prioritize the allocation of ESs to MUs. We report findings
from an application to a joint collaborative management area (ZIF of Vale do Sousa) in northwestern
Portugal. The forest owners selected wood production as the first ES allocation priority, with lower
priorities for other ESs. In opposition, the civil society assigned the highest allocation priorities to
biodiversity, cork, and carbon stock, with the lowest priority being assigned to wood production. The
civil society had the highest mean rank of allocation priority scores. We found significant differences
in priority scores between the civil society and the other three groups, highlighting the civil society
and market agents as the most discordant groups. We spatially evaluated potential for conflicts
among group ESs allocation priorities. The findings suggest that this approach can be helpful to
decision makers, increasing the effectiveness of forest management plan implementationinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Opportunity Costs of In Situ Carbon Storage Derived by Multiple-Objective Stand-Level Optimization-Results from Case Studies in Portugal and Germany
Considering in situ carbon storage in forest management has gained momentum under increasing pressure to decarbonize our economies. Here, we present results from case studies in Portugal and Germany showing the opportunity costs of in situ carbon storage derived by multiple-objective optimization. We used a stand-level model to optimize land expectation value under uncertainty as a reference, then derived opportunity costs by including the enhancement of the average carbon storage in aboveground biomass as a second objective. Using the optimal (compromise) solution when considering both objectives simultaneously, we show opportunity costs of EUR 119 (Portugal) and EUR 68 (Germany) per Mg CO2eq. These opportunity costs are higher than conservative, but lower than alternative cost estimates for future damages caused by current CO2 emissions. An important result was that suggested reference solutions in both countries (though only for low discount rates in Portugal) were mixed forests without clearfelling. In Germany, this implicitly elevated carbon storage. Such "closer-to-nature-forest-management" systems were also mostly suggested by the optimization tool when carbon storage was an objective
Effect of physiological overload on pregnancy in women with mitral regurgitation
OBJECTIVES: to evaluate the structural and functional heart abnormalities in women with mitral regurgitation during pregnancy.INTRODUCTION: Women with mitral regurgitation progress well during pregnancy. However, the effects on the heart of the association between pregnancy and mitral regurgitation are not well established.METHODS: This is a case-control, longitudinal prospective study. Echocardiograms were performed in 18 women with mitral regurgitation at the 12th and 36th week of pregnancy and on the 45th day of the puerperium. Twelve age-matched healthy and pregnant women were included as controls and underwent the same evaluation as the study group.RESULTS: Compared with controls, women with mitral regurgitation presented increased left cardiac chambers in all evaluations. Increasing left atrium during pregnancy occurred only in the mitral regurgitation group. At the end of the puerperium, women with mitral regurgitation showed persistent enlargement of the left atrium compared with the beginning of pregnancy (5.0 +/- 1.1 cm vs 4.6 +/- 0.9 cm; p < 0.05). Reduced left ventricular relative wall thickness (0.13 +/- 0.02 vs 0.16 +/- 0.02; p < 0.05) and an increased peak of afterload (278 +/- 55 g/cm(2) vs 207 +/- 28 g/cm(2); p < 0.05) was still observed on the 45th day after delivery in the mitral regurgitation group compared with controls.CONCLUSIONS: Pregnancy causes unfavorable structural alterations in women with mitral regurgitation that are associated with an aggravation of the hemodynamic overload
Multicriteria Decision Analysis and Group Decision-Making to Select Stand-Level Forest Management Models and Support Landscape-Level Collaborative Planning
Forest management planning is a challenge due to the diverse criteria that need to be
considered in the underlying decision-making process. This challenge becomes more complex in
joint collaborative management areas (ZIF) because the decision now may involve numerous actors
with diverse interests, preferences, and goals. In this research, we present an approach to identifying
and quantifying the most relevant criteria that actors consider in a forest management planning
process in a ZIF context, including quantifying the performance of seven alternative stand-level forest
management models (FMM). Specifically, we developed a combined multicriteria decision analysis
and group decision-making process by (a) building a cognitive map with the actors to identify the
criteria and sub-criteria; (b) structuring the decision tree; (c) structuring a questionnaire to elicit
the importance of criteria and sub-criteria in a pairwise comparison process, and to evaluate the
FMM alternatives; and (d) applying a Delphi survey to gather actors’ preferences. We report results
from an application to a case study area, ZIF of Vale do Sousa, in North-Western Portugal. Actors
assigned the highest importance to the criteria income (56.8% of all actors) and risks (21.6% of all
actors) and the lowest to cultural services (27.0% of all actors). Actors agreed on their preferences for
the sub-criteria of income (diversification of income sources), risks (wildfires) and cultural services
(leisure and recreation activities). However, there was a poor agreement among actors on the subcriteria
of the wood demand and biodiversity criteria. For 27.0% of all actors the FMM with the
highest performance was the pedunculate oak and for 43.2% of all actors the eucalypt FMM was
the least preferable alternative. The findings indicate that this approach can support ZIF managers
in enhancing forest management planning by improving its utility for actors and facilitating its
implementationinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Web-based forest resources management decision support system
In this paper, we present a web-based decision support system (DSS)—wSADfLOR—to
facilitate the access of stakeholders to tools that may contribute to enhancing forest management
planning. The emphasis is on a web-based architecture and a web graphic user interface (wGUI)
that may effectively support the analysis of trade-offs between ecosystem services in order to
address participatory and sustainable forest management objectives. For that purpose, the wGUI
provides remote access to a management information system, enabling users to analyze
environmental and biometric data and topological information as well. Moreover, the wGUI
provides remote access to forest simulators so that users may define and simulate prescriptions such
as chronological sequences of management options and the corresponding forest ecosystem services
outcomes. Remote access to management planning methods is further provided so that users may
input their objectives and constraints. The wGUI delivers information about tradeoffs between
ecosystem services in the form of decision maps so that users in different locations may negotiate
bundles of ecosystem services as well as the plan needed to provide them. The multiple criteria
programming routines provide proposals for management plans that may be assessed further, using
geographical and alphanumeric information provided by the wGUI. Results for an application to a
forested landscape extending to 14,388 ha are presented and discussed. This landscape provides
several ecosystem services and the development of its management plan involves multiple
stakeholders. Results show that the web-based architecture and the wGUI provide effective access
for stakeholders to information about the forest management planning area and to decision support
tools that may contribute to addressing complex multi-objective and multiple-decision-maker
management planning contexts. They also highlight that the involvement and participation of
stakeholders in the design of the web-based architecture contributes to assuring the quality and the
usability of the systeminfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Modeling post-fire mortality in pure and mixed forest stands in Portugal—A forest planning-oriented model
Assessing impacts of management strategies may allow designing more resistant forests to
wildfires. Planning-oriented models to predict the effect of stand structure and forest composition on mortality for supporting fire-smart management decisions, and allowing its inclusion in forest management optimization systems were developed. Post-fire mortality was modeled as a function of measurable forest inventory data and projections over time in 165 pure and 76 mixed forest stands in Portugal, collected by the 5th National Forest Inventory plots (NFI) plus other sample plots from ForFireS project, intercepted within 2006–2008 wildfire perimeters’ data. Presence and tree survival were obtained by examining 2450 trees from 16 species one year after the wildfire occurrence. A set of logistic regression models were developed under a three-stage modeling system: firstly multiple
fixed-effects at stand-level that comprises a sub-model to predict mortality from wildfire; and another for the proportion of dead trees on stands killed by fire. At tree-level due to the nested structure of the data analyzed (trees within stands), a mixed-effect model was developed to estimate mortality among trees in a fire event. The results imply that the variation of tree mortality decreases when tree diameter at breast height increases. Moreover, the relative mortality increases with stand density, higher altitude and steeper slopes. In the same conditions, conifers are more prone to die than eucalyptus and
broadleaves. Pure stands of broadleaves exhibit noticeably higher fire resistance than mixed stands of broadleaves and others species compositionThis research was supported by Project UID/AGR/00239/2013, PTDC/AGR-CFL/64146/2006
“Decision support tools for integrating fire and forest management planning” and project FIRE-ENGINE “Flexible
Design of Forest Fire Management Systems” (MIT/FSE/0064/2009), both funded by the Portuguese Science
Foundation (FCT), and contributes to the activities of the ALTERFOR Project “Alternative models and robust
decision-making for future forest management”—H2020-ISIB-2015-2/grant agreement No. 67654, funded by
European Union Seventh Framework Programme. This research has received also funding from the European
Union’s H2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 691149
(SuFoRun). The authors would like to thank the Portuguese Science Foundation for funding the doctoral
scholarships of Brigite Botequim (SFRH/ BD/44830/2008) and the Post Doc grant SFRH/BPD/96806/2013 of
Susete Marques. 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. In addition, the authors wish to acknowledge the Portuguese Forest Service (ICNF) for supplying the perimeters of wildfires and NFI Databases and ForFireS Project for providing the inventory DatabasesS
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