In Costa Rica, the role of forests in climate change adaptation and mitigation is widely acknowledged and various political and financial mechanisms have been developed to support ecosystems in facilitating adaptation processes and act as carbon sinks that directly contribute to mitigation. However, there is a lack of instruments to facilitate access to information for improving the decision-making process for climate change adaptation and mitigation when it comes to the management of forests and associated ecosystem services.
This paper introduces a GIS framework (Polyscape) designed to explore spatially explicit synergies and trade-offs amongst ecosystem services to support landscape management (from individual fields through to catchments of ca 10,000 km2 scale). Algorithms are described and results presented from a case study application within an upland Welsh catchment (Pontbren). Polyscape currently includes algorithms to explore the impacts of land cover change on flood risk, habitat connectivity, erosion and associated sediment delivery to receptors, carbon sequestration and agricultural productivity.
Wetland Consulting Services (WCS) (Pty.) Ltd. was established in 1998 and offers a specialised service in wetland and river consulting. It is an independent consultancy staffed by a team of highly trained professionals with considerable experience and expertise in the fields of water resources, ecological and environmental sciences. Since its inception, they have steadily grown to be a significant player in the specialist wetland and riparian management consulting field in South Africa and the rest of Africa.
The Water Supply Stress Index Model (WaSSI) is a web-based tool that can be used to project the effects of land use change, climate change, and water withdrawals on river flows, water supply stress, and ecosystem productivity (i.e. carbon sequestration dynamics) across the conterminous United States and Mexico. As water yield and carbon sequestration are tightly coupled, WaSSI is useful for evaluating trade-offs among management strategies for these ecosystem services.
Despite the adoption of many international agreements over the last decades, degradation of forests and deforestation has continued. Since this is largely due to the market's failure to account for forests' multifunctionality, this issue argues that a new, holistic approach is necessary to ensure sustainable forest management (SFM) is adequately supported and financed. Against this background, 35 articles explore the role of:
This paper argues strongly that forestry generally - and in particular as a means of carbon storage – has an important role to play in the achievement of environmental protection, social development and economic development goals.
This paper demonstrates that climate mitigation and adaptation can be integrated in a sustainable urban forest management framework that is inclusive of climate considerations and strives to sustain a strong array of environmental, social and economic values. It is shown here that such a framework may contain management practices that consider the net effect of both decreasing vulnerability and emissions.
