Exploring the effects of management intensification on multiple ecosystem services in an ecosystem management context

Understanding forest dynamics under varying management intensification is a crucial step for designing and implementing sustainable forest management scenarios. One way to assess the sustainability is to evaluate the long-term supply of ecosystem services (ES) with some performance indicators. This research focuses on exploring the effects of management intensification on several ESs such as habitat for biodiversity conservation, wood production, carbon stock, cultural values, water provision and soil protection. Forest development was simulated over time with the ETCAP forest management decision support system (DSS) to investigate the effects of intensified forest management activities, representing different treatment rates, rotation periods and afforestation levels, on the selected ecosystem services. Hamidiye forest planning unit was used as a case study area with 19,009 ha forests in southeastern Turkey. The management scenarios with intensified forest interventions such as high rate of thinning and afforestation areas with medium rotation ages led to increased harvest level, carbon storage, soil protection, deadwood and forest area, and reductions in largest stand volume, understory, basal area, ground water and cultural values. The same intensified scenarios with short rotation ages, however, resulted in again higher harvest levels, yet a more regulated forest structure due mainly to the increasing afforestation areas and productivity. Extension of rotation periods, however, appear to have marginal impact on carbon storage, positive effect on soil protection and significant effect on harvest level. Scenarios with low intensified interventions only resulted in high values of biodiversity conservation and cultural values. Intensive treatments and larger afforestation areas had significant impact on the overall results. Overall, the analysis of the modeling approach with varying management scenarios led to better and wider understanding of forest development over time by allowing the assessment of the impacts of management interventions on the sustainable supply of the ecosystem services that highly depend on the afforestation level, thinning rate and rotation period.