Multi-objective land allocation for zoning of ecosystem services in mountain forests

The paper proposes a system for zoning of mountain areas based on the level of provisioning of ecosystem services. Techniques of multi-objective land allocation were applied to allocate complementary and conflicting objectives. The zoning system consists of four phases: i) Identification of criteria for the evaluation of ecosystem services; ii) Quantification of criteria for three different forestland states; iii) Evaluation of potential and effect of the forest on providing the ecosystem services and iv) Zoning of ecosystem services with their prioritization and spatial allocation of support measures. The study was conducted in the Tatra Mountains (Slovakia). Erosion control, avalanche control, wood production and cultural services were evaluated. The greatest differences between potential and effect of the evaluated ecosystem services were identified for the avalanche control. A comparison of our results with the existing (control) map of ecosystem services has proved that the proposed system is a potent means for multi-objective forest planning.