This study investigates how the seven core resilience principles are integrated into assessments of forest system resilience to natural or human-induced disturbances across engineering, ecological, and social-ecological resilience concepts. Following PRISMA guidelines, a literature search in the Web of Science database using the keywords “resilience”, “forest” and “ecosystem services” yielded 1828 studies, of which 330 met the selection criteria. The most commonly used criterion was diversity, a sub-criterion of “diversity and redundancy”, appearing in 50% of studies. The results indicate that social and governance-related principles, learning and experimentation (7%), participation (11%), and polycentric governance (9%) have not been frequently addressed. Although numerous studies have employed various principles for assessing forest resilience, none have considered all seven principles jointly. This highlights a significant research gap, emphasising the need to quantify these principles in forest systems. Understanding forest-community dynamics is essential for enhancing the long-term resilience and sustainability of both systems.

There is a dearth of assessments of temporal trajectories and spatial patterns of planetary boundaries (PBs). However, a generic computation tool to facilitate such studies is lacking. Here, we developed an R-based, open-source software package “boundaries” that can calculate and plot the statuses of different PBs (i.e., if, when, where, and how strongly they are transgressed), based on required variables provided from an external source. The pilot version presented here is designed to use outputs from the LPJmL biosphere model, which dynamically simulates processes underlying the PBs for land system change, biosphere integrity, biogeochemical (nitrogen) flows, and freshwater change. We quantify and visualize the past and current statuses of these four PBs to demonstrate how boundaries can provide transparent and robust PB evaluation. We strongly encourage users to enhance boundaries for processing outputs from other models and datasets and provide guidance on how to do so.

Mapping ecosystem integrity is a key task of the planetary-boundaries framework. Two new control variables have been suggested for the core planetary boundary for functional biosphere integrity: (1) human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) and (2) a metric for ecological disruption (EcoRisk). However they have not yet been mapped spatially and temporally explicitly. Here, we use simulations with the dynamic global vegetation model LPJmL to map the status of these variables at a spatial resolution of 0.5° × 0.5° for every year since 1600. We additionally quantify local degradation thresholds by comparison with independent biosphere integrity indicators. We finally aggregate results globally to a planetary boundary status as the land area transgressing the local thresholds. We find that the local boundary is currently transgressed on 60% of the global land area, with 38% already at high risk of degradation. This study provides an important first step and opens the opportunity for further research, especially for finding a planetary-scale threshold.

Six of nine planetary boundaries are currently transgressed, many related to human land use. Conversion of sizeable land areas to biomass plantations for Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) – often assumed in climate mitigation scenarios to meet the Paris Agreement – may exert additional pressure on terrestrial planetary boundaries. Using spatially-explicit, process-based global biogeochemical modelling, we systematically compute feedstock production potentials for BECCS under individual and joint constraints of the planetary boundaries for nitrogen flows, freshwater change, land system change and biosphere integrity (including protection of remaining forests), while reserving current agricultural areas for meeting the growing global demand for food, fodder and fibre. We find that the constrained BECCS potential from dedicated Miscanthus plantations is close to zero (0.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year under mid-century climate for Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5). The planetary boundary for biosphere integrity has the largest individual effect, highlighting a particularly severe trade-off between climate change mitigation with BECCS and ecosystem preservation. Ultimately however, the overall limitation results from the joint effect of all four planetary boundaries, emphasizing the importance of a holistic consideration of Earth system stability in the context of climate change mitigation.