SCENARIO DEVELOPMENT FOR THE IMITATION MODELLING OF FOREST ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

Abstract

Sustainable forest management implies the necessity to maintain and uphold the balance between the growing demand for forest ecosystem services and the capabilities present. This issue motivates the development of ways to include various ecosystem services in the forest ecosystem planning and management system, taking into account social, political, environmental, and economic contexts. One of the effective tools for ecosystem service management is imitation modelling, which allows assessing the decision-making risks and consequences. This raises the scientific problem of substantiating possible alternative scenarios for future forested area development for subsequent simulation. This article is aimed at analysing the approaches to creating scenarios for the development of a forest area for local-level imitation modelling and testing a new method based on the development of the existing approaches to solving this problem. In its first part, modern research analysis in the field of imitation scenario development is presented; the second one proposes a new method for compiling scenarios, created within the framework of the POLYFORES project, and also presents the results of its testing at three model sites located in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, the Republic of Karelia, and the Moscow Region. For the forest plots of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, four scenarios for forest area development have been created, aimed at obtaining benefits: 1 – from timber harvesting, 2 – from recreational ecosystem services and food forest resources, 3 – from regulating ecosystem services, 4 – both from timber harvesting, under the conditions of intensified forest growing, and from regulating ecosystem services. For forest plots in the Republic of Karelia, the first scenario describes the situation of meeting the demand for wood, while also preserving the biodiversity and regulating ecosystem services; the second and third scenarios take into account the increased demand for wood, with low and high priorities for environmental conservation. For the forest plots of the Moscow Region, only two scenarios were relevant, with the increasing need of citizens for recreational ecosystem services, and the biodiversity preservation priority in management decision-making either remaining low or increasing. For each scenario, forestry activities corresponding to the management objectives have been developed. The proposed scenarios can be used to obtain information about the impact of various management decisions on providing forest ecosystem services.