Decision support toolkit FOR ADAPTive management of forest ecosystem services across borders in the face of climate change and economic scarcity in Europe

There is an urgent need to provide decision support for forest managers facing challenges of cross-border forest management and system change. The project will employ novel analytical approaches and structured decision making to inform managers in maintaining biodiversity and other ecosystem services while accounting for climate change and limited budgets in Europe. The project will reveal contrasts in how European countries implement pan-national policies regarding forest management based on a literature review. We will then examine and contrast existing databases of decision-support tools that can support silvicultural adaptation across political borders. This policy and decision-support analysis will provide critical foundations for structured decision-making workshops with management teams from selected cross-border national parks along an elevational gradient. Prototype decision frameworks developed in these workshops will allow spatial optimization of adaptation measures across borders and years, providing important guidance for managers facing uncertainties about climate change and economic scarcity. The refined decision framework will be featured in an online decision-support toolkit for overcoming hurdles in planning and decision making about forest management across borders. In particular, an interactive web mapping tool will allow user-friendly evaluations of management strategies and their outcomes for ecosystem services under multiple climate and budget scenarios for selected cases. The enhanced database of decision-support tools with guided search facilities along with interactive visualizations of decision frameworks will make the toolkit extensible across Europe, and as such will be useful to foresters, policy makers, analysts and stakeholders. Along the way, the project will disseminate findings to scientific audiences and public at large to enhance knowledge and impact for maintaining ecosystem services across borders in Europe.