2026-10-06T06:17:53Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/34010853 2026-09-28T12:31:16Z category_26899 category_26890 category_26947 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

Moderate forest restructuring outperforms drastic change in sustaining the benefits of nature-based solutions in land-constrained regions Guibin Zheng (25121154) Zhuo WU (14209145) Erfu Dai (22883324) Hongping Zeng (22883294) Ziting Shao (22883326) Yilang Gao (22883350) Guolin Liu (22883345) Landscape ecology Ecosystem function Natural resource management Nature-based Solutions forest structural optimization functional persistence <p dir="ltr">Nature-based Solutions (NbS) can align forest management with societal priorities, yet how to deliver durable socio-ecological benefits by restructuring existing forests remains poorly understood, especially where forest expansion is constrained. Most forest optimization maximizes total ecosystem service output, but overlooks spatially variable societal demand and whether short-term gains persist through natural succession. Using the urbanized Pearl River Delta (China) as a case study, we built a socio-ecological modelling workflow coupling multi-objective optimization, suitability-based spatial allocation and long-term succession simulation to 2100. We compared demand oriented versus conventional forest restructuring under three flexibility levels. We show that embedding societal demand improves overall forest multifunctionality across economic value, carbon storage and ecological function. Only economic gains consistently target high‑demand forest areas. Moderate restructuring with ±10 % flexibility retained multifunctional advantages through to 2100. In contrast, drastic restructuring with ±50 % flexibility produced strong short‑term benefits that eroded and even reversed during succession. Persistent gains depend on distributed functional contributions across multiple tree species, while intensive restructuring leads to risky dependence on a single species and large age‑class shifts.</p> 2026-09-28T12:31:16Z Dataset Dataset 10.6084/m9.figshare.34010853.v2 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Moderate_forest_restructuring_outperforms_drastic_change_in_sustaining_the_benefits_of_nature-based_solutions_in_land-constrained_regions/34010853 CC BY 4.0