Ecosystem service multifunctionality of low-productivity forests and implications for conservation and management

Low-productivity forests are often the last remaining pristine forests in managed forest landscapes and typically overrepresented among protected forests. However, the provisioning of individual and multiple ecosystem services (ES-multifunctionality) by these forests remains poorly assessed, making it difficult to evaluate their importance in forest conservation and management. Using nationwide data on ecosystem services (ES) from forest plots, we test whether levels of ES-multifunctionality and individual ES differ between low-productivity forested mires and rocky outcrops in relation to the levels of productive forests, and as a function of forest age, tree species richness and climate. We defined ES-multifunctionality using different threshold values of the maximum levels (low, medium and high) and weighted these according to land-use objectives (equal weight of all services, greater weight to cultural and supporting ES, or greater weight to production). We show that the ES-multifunc...