How can ecosystem services scenarios inform forest planning?—Seven lessons from Leanachan Forest, Scotland

Abstract There are growing societal expectations that forests are managed for multiple benefits including carbon storage, biodiversity, health and recreation. Consequently, forest managers are increasingly expected to consider how external factors, including climate change, affect the future of their forests and the wider public benefits they provide. But traditional silvicultural methods providing production forecasts based on mensuration surveys and site conditions—supplemented with expert knowledge—do not provide insights into non‐timber ecosystem services and the unprecedented potential future changes are too complex to comprehend based on experience alone. Scenario planning, supported by ecosystem services modelling, helps to assess the future and its uncertainties in an organised way, through structured processes that push decision‐makers and planners beyond the axioms and norms of conventional wisdom. However, despite advances in modelling and mapping forest ecosystem services, they are rarely developed to be used operationally in forest planning. To learn how ecosystem services scenarios could inform forest planning, researchers and a forest manager in Scotland collaborated over a 6‐year period, co‐producing and interpreting scenarios over 17 meetings and 38 h of engagement. We distilled seven lessons that summarise how ecosystem services scenarios can assist forest planners in their tree species and management choices by improving understanding of the trade‐offs and identifying opportunities to increase both timber and non‐timber benefits. Developing useful and usable ecosystem services scenarios for forest managers requires co‐production, where transdisciplinary collaboration, an aspiration for knowledge democracy and boundary management between researchers and foresters lead to new forms of knowledge that support forest planning. With adequate resourcing and commitment, ecosystem services scenarios can raise understanding and improve forest planning for an uncertain future. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.