Abstract
The planting of forests has been met with both scepticism and support in international forest policy and management fora. Discussions regarding the values of plantations for extrinsic purposes such as timber supply, carbon sequestration, water quality and biodiversity conservation, reveal widely varying opinions across and within different settings. Recent research highlights the role of planted forests in providing multiple ecosystem services to human society. However, there has been little assessment of ecosystems services, partly due to lack of suitable frameworks and evaluation tools. Planted forests generally have low ecosystem services values initially and are more vulnerable to erosion and other impacts of mismanagement than natural forests. Careful monitoring of change in ecosystem services values over time is therefore vital to investors and all stakeholders in plantations. Drawing on lessons derived from ecosystem services assessment for various land use types, here we propose an easy-to-apply framework to assess ecosystem services from planted forests that could be used in various planted forest types around the world. A necessary next step for researchers and practitioners is to test the proposed framework under various settings.
Highlights
Planted forests are becoming an increasingly important part of the global forest estate
There is evidence of conversion of natural-to-planted forests in the tropics and subtropics (e.g., Ainembabazi and Angelsen, 2014; Zamorano-Elgueta et al, 2015), loss of natural forest in these two biomes is primarily driven by agricultural expansion (FAO, 2016)
It is important to note that planted forests generally differ from natural forests in species diversity, regeneration characteristics, ecosystem functioning and associated ecosystem services provision – especially in their early stages of establishment
Summary
Planted forests are becoming an increasingly important part of the global forest estate. Assessment of ES from planted forests can serve many purposes, including: (i) raising clarity and awareness of the relative importance of planted forests to policy makers, investors, environmental NGOs and local communities, (ii) improving the efficient use of limited funds by identifying where planted forests can achieve greatest benefits at lowest cost, (iii) supporting new opportunities to link planted forests with markets for ecosystem services, (iv) providing guidance for decision makers in understanding user preferences and the relative value that people place on ecosystem services, (v) generating information for designing planted forests so as to maximize their contribution to local communities, broader society and the global environment, and (vi) informing land use planning. We review current approaches for identifying and assessing ES from various types of planted forests and propose a simple and pragmatic framework for assessing ES, applicable to any type of planted forests. We propose an approach to assess ES from planted forests that is generalizable to a wide range of settings
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