FORSERV

Mountain ecosystems are highly sensitive to global change. In fact, the continued capacity of mountain regions to provide goods and services to society is threatened by the impact of environmental changes on ecosystems. While mapping ecosystem services values is known to support sustainable resource management, appropriate methods to address uncertainties in a quantitative manner are missing. Similarly, spatially explicit local expert knowledge has not yet been integrated in the modeling process. This project seeks to establish a new approach for mapping flows and related uncertainties of multiple ecosystem services considering knowledge acquired by expert surveys. Applying the novel method in a case study in the Swiss Alps, we aim at (1) investigating how the inclusion of uncertainties alters the value and spatial pattern of a bundle of ecosystem services, (2) demonstrating how elicited expert knowledge can update and improve model outputs and how it changes uncertainties related to ecosystem services assessments, (3) visualizing trade-offs between different mountain forest ecosystem services under different land-use scenarios. Such information is crucial for helping decision-makers and managers to secure and balance the ecosystem services of mountain landscapes and to target their programs and limited resources.