A Decision Support System for Assessing Trade-Offs between Ecosystem Management Goals: An Application in Portugal

Abstract

Cork oak (Quercus suber L.) and holm oak (Quercus rotundifolia) ecosystems are characteristic of Mediterranean forestry in Portugal. Even though cork is the most valuable product, these ecosystems provide multiple products and services. Assessing trade-offs between multiple goals is thus critical for the effectiveness of oak ecosystem management planning. This paper focuses on the development of a decision support system for oak ecosystems' scenario analysis including multiple criteria. It includes an innovative decision support systems (DSS) functionality to assess trade-offs between the criteria that may support negotiation and consensus building between decision-makers and forest stakeholders. Specifically, a module that encapsulates the Feasible Goals Method/Interactive Decision Maps (FGM/IDM) technique is developed for interactive visualization of the Pareto frontier. The Pareto frontier illustrates the degree to which improving one particular criterion requires accepting sacrifices in the achievements of others. It thus provides information about trade-offs between competing decision-makers' preferences. Results are discussed for a large-scale application encompassing over 1 million ha of cork and holm oak forest ecosystems in Southern Portugal. This study demonstrates the potential of the new OPEN ACCESSForests 2015, 6 66 DSS functionality to enhance multi-objective forest planning, namely by facilitating participation by stakeholders and providing transparency to the decision-making processes.

Decision Support for the Provision of Ecosystem Services under Climate Change: An Editorial

“…Decision analysts and scientists try to cover the complexity of the real world with sophisticated models and methods in their development of new and adaptation of existing DSS. The presented examples show that there is a need to combine different methodological approaches [10], include uncertainty analysis [13], and provide different means to communicate the results to the user [11]. Decision makers expect easy to use and smart tools, which are capable in addressing the challenges of adaptive forest management in a sustained provision of ecosystem services within the context of climate change.…”

“…Garcia-Gonzalo et al [11] demonstrate the integration of an Interactive Decision Maps (IDM) technique within a DSS for an interactive visualization of the Pareto frontier. The multi-objective forest planning scenario of 1 million ha of cork and holm oak forest ecosystems in Southern Portugal is facilitated by stakeholder participation.…”

Combining Decision Support Approaches for Optimizing the Selection of Bundles of Ecosystem Services

“…Authors in Reference [27] used a production possibility frontier-based approach to evaluate the effects of bioenergy production on timber production potential and biodiversity. SADfLOR was built from forest ecosystem decision support system architectures [15][16][17] to evolve a Pareto frontier module that encapsulates the Feasible Goals Method/Interactive Decision Maps technique for interactive visualization of the web-based Pareto frontier [23,28]. Former developments of this multiple-criteria approach included the analysis of trade-offs between cork-and timber-related products at the regional level [22] and the analysis of trade-offs between timber-related products and a wide range of nonwood forest products [18] and regulatory services [29] at the landscape level.…”

“…The interface of the web-based tool asks the decision maker whether the provision of each ecosystem service (criteria) is to be maximized or minimized. After the selection by decision-makers of the list of ecosystem services to maximize or minimize in the bundle, the tool launches the process for generating the Pareto frontiers (e.g., as in References [22,23]). This information provides a basis for the negotiation of the packages of ecosystem services to be supplied by the decision-makers [18].…”

Addressing Wildfire Risk in Forest Management Planning with Multiple Criteria Decision Making Methods

“…The SADfLOR decision support toolbox [6,[61][62][63][64] was used to automate the process of model building for the analysis of trade-offs between wildfire criteria and the provision of other ecosystem services. The SADfLOR management information module stored both alphanumeric and topological data from ZIF_VS.…”