Resilience is increasingly being considered as a new paradigm of forest management among scientists, practitioners, and policymakers. However, metrics of resilience to environmental change are lacking. Faced with novel disturbances, forests may be able to sustain existing ecosystem services and biodiversity by exhibiting resilience, or alternatively these attributes may undergo either a linear or nonlinear decline. Here we provide a novel quantitative approach for assessing forest resilience that focuses on three components of resilience, namely resistance, recovery, and net change, using a spatially explicit model of forest dynamics. Under the pulse set scenarios, we explored the resilience of nine ecosystem services and four biodiversity measures following a one‐off disturbance applied to an increasing percentage of forest area. Under the pulse + press set scenarios, the six disturbance intensities explored during the pulse set were followed by a continuous disturbance. We detected thresholds in net change under pulse + press scenarios for the majority of the ecosystem services and biodiversity measures, which started to decline sharply when disturbance affected >40% of the landscape. Thresholds in net change were not observed under the pulse scenarios, with the exception of timber volume and ground flora species richness. Thresholds were most pronounced for aboveground biomass, timber volume with respect to the ecosystem services, and ectomycorrhizal fungi and ground flora species richness with respect to the biodiversity measures. Synthesis and applications. The approach presented here illustrates how the multidimensionality of stability research in ecology can be addressed and how forest resilience can be estimated in practice. Managers should adopt specific management actions to support each of the three components of resilience separately, as these may respond differently to disturbance. In addition, management interventions aiming to deliver resilience should incorporate an assessment of both pulse and press disturbances to ensure detection of threshold responses to disturbance, so that appropriate management interventions can be identified.

Context: Agricultural intensification is being widely pursued as a policy option to improve food security and human development. Yet, there is a need to understand the impact of agricultural intensification on the provision of multiple ecosystem services, and to evaluate the possible occurrence of tipping points.Objectives: To quantify and assess the long-term spatial dynamics of ecosystem service (ES) provision in a landscape undergoing agricultural intensification at four time points 1930, 1950, 1980 and 2015. Determine if thresholds or tipping points in ES provision may have occurred and if there are any detectable impacts on economic development and employment. Methods: We used the InVEST suite of software models together with a time series of historical land cover maps and an Input–Output model to evaluate these dynamics over an 85-year period in the county of Dorset, southern England.Results: Results indicated that trends in ES were often non-linear, highlighting the potential for abrupt changes in ES provision to occur in response to slight changes in underlying drivers. Despite the fluctuations in provision of different ES, overall economic activity increased almost linearly during the study interval, in line with the increase in agricultural productivity.Conclusions: Such non-linear thresholds in ES will need to be avoided in the future by approaches aiming to deliver sustainable agricultural intensification. A number of positive feedback mechanisms are identified that suggest these thresholds could be considered as tipping points. However, further research into these feedbacks is required to fully determine the occurrence of tipping points in agricultural systems.

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are widely acknowledged as important but are often neglected by ecosystem service assessments, leading to a representational bias. This reflects the methodological challenges associated with producing robust and repeatable CES valuations. Here we provide a comparative analysis of three approaches for non-monetary valuation of CES, namely a structured survey, participatory GIS (PGIS) and GPS tracking methods. These were used to assess both recreation and aesthetic value of habitats within the New Forest National Park, UK. The association of CES with habitats enabled results of all three methods to be visualised at the landscape scale using maps, strengthening their value to conservation management. Broadleaved woodland and heathland habitats were consistently valued highly for both CES, whereas agricultural land tended to be associated with low values. Results obtained by the different methods were positively correlated in 6 out of 10 comparisons, indicating a degree of consistency between them. The spatial distribution of CES values at the landscape scale was also generally consistent between the three methods. These results highlight the value of comparative analyses of CES for identifying robust results, providing a way forward for their inclusion in land management decision-making.