Forest planning in a participatory context often involves multiple stakeholders with conflicting interests. A promising approach for handling these complex situations is to integrate participatory planning and multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA). The objective of this paper is to analyze strengths and weaknesses of such an integrated approach, focusing on how the use of MCDA has influenced the participatory process. The paper outlines a model for a participatory MCDA process with five steps: stakeholder analysis, structuring of the decision problem, generation of alternatives, elicitation of preferences, and ranking of alternatives. This model was applied in a case study of a planning process for the urban forest in Lycksele, Sweden. In interviews with stakeholders, criteria for four different social groups were identified. Stakeholders also identified specific areas important to them and explained what activities the areas were used for and the forest management they wished for there. Existing forest data were combined with information from interviews to create a map in which the urban forest was divided into zones of different management classes. Three alternative strategic forest plans were produced based on the zonal map. The stakeholders stated their preferences individually by the Analytic Hierarchy Process in inquiry forms and a ranking of alternatives and consistency ratios were determined for each stakeholder.Rankings of alternatives were aggregated; first, for each social group using the arithmetic mean, and then an overall aggregated ranking was calculated from the group rankings using the weighted arithmetic mean. The participatory MCDA process in Lycksele is assessed against five social goals: incorporating public values into decisions, improving the substantive quality of decisions, resolving conflict among competing interests, building trust in institutions, and educating and informing the public. The results and assessment of the case study support the integration of participatory planning and MCDA as a viable option for handling complex forest-management situations. Key issues related to the MCDA methodology that need to be explored further were identified: 1) The handling of placespecific criteria, 2) development of alternatives, 3) the aggregation of individual preferences into a common preference, and 4) application and evaluation of the integrated approach in real case studies.3

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Land tenure heterogeneity may be an obstacle to forested landscape-level management planning and the provision of ecosystem services. This research focused on the potential of combining participatory workshops and multiple criteria decision methods (MCDMs) to support the development and negotiation of targets for the supply of ecosystem services and help design the management plan needed to meet those targets. We describe an application to two forested landscapes with several ownership types in Portugal. The approach encompassed the design of two workshops involving more than 40 stakeholders (forests owners, the forest service, the forest industry, local municipalities and other nongovernmental organizations). The list of ecosystem services included carbon stocks, cork, pine cones, and forest inventory at the end of the planning horizon as well as volume flows from a range of forest species. Results demonstrated the potential of MCDM tools to help individual forest stakeholders set and adjust ecosystem services target levels. They further demonstrated the potential of MCDMs to facilitate the negotiation of these targets by the stakeholders and the reaching of meaningful solutions. Finally, they demonstrated that these tools provide valuable information to combine the negotiations of both targets and behaviors and programs needed to attain them.

A palaeoecological study was performed in the northern Scandinavian mountain range in Sweden. The aim was to study vegetation changes and shifts in forest limit altitudes during the last 5000 years in a tree-less archaeological site (Adamvalta) situated below the regional forest limit, and in a forested reference area with similar geological features but without archaeological evidence of human presence (Ajdevaratj). The suitability of uncritically using forest limit changes as indicators of climate change is also discussed. The study included analyses of pollen, pollen accumulation rates (PAR), macrofossils and loss-on-ignition. The results indicate vegetation changes in both areas plausibly caused by climate c. 3800 BP and c. 500 400 BP. However, at Adamvalta, settlements were established c. 1300 750 BP, close to the mountain birch ( Betula pubescens ssp. czerepanovi) forest limit. About 800 BP, the birch forest cover at Adamvalta decreased and the vegetation developed into an alpine heath, as a result of human-induced deforestation. The following ‘Little Ice Age’, in combination with human impact from the sixteenth century onwards, prevented forest recovery, and the site remains treeless. Such vegetation changes were not recorded at Adjevaratj. It is deduced that the present position of the forest limit at Adamvalta is governed by a combination of factors where previous human impact and climate have been the major driving forces determining the long-term vegetation development. Hence, a thorough knowledge of the site history is important when forest limits are used as a proxy for climate change.