High rates of short-term dynamics of forest ecosystem services

• Main Authors: Bengtsson, J. (Author), Mair, L. (Author), Moen, J. (Author), Snäll, T. (Author), Triviño, M. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Research 2021
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Carbon storage; Dynamics; Ecosystem services; Ecosystems; Forest ecosystem; Forestry; Large-scales; Limited information; Spatially explicit; Storage as a service (STaaS); Time-scales; Wood production; Wood products
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 Currently, the main tools for assessing and managing ecosystem services at large scales are maps providing snapshots of their potential supply. However, many ecosystems change over short timescales; thus, such maps soon become inaccurate. Here we show high rates of short-term dynamics of three key forest ecosystem services: wood production, bilberry production and topsoil carbon storage. Almost 85% of the coldspots and 65% of the hotspots for these services had changed into a different state over a ten-year period. Wood production showed higher rates of short-term dynamics than bilberry production and carbon storage. The high rates of dynamics mean that static snapshot ecosystem service maps provide limited information for assessing and managing multifunctional, dynamic landscapes, such as forests. We advocate that dynamic, spatially explicit tools to assess and manage ecosystem service dynamics be further developed and applied in post-2020 biodiversity and ecosystem service policy supporting frameworks. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.