A Descriptive Plantation Typology and Coding System to Aid the Analysis of Ecological and Socio-Economic Outcomes

Purpose of Review After decades of intense academic and policy debate, a shared understanding of the term 'plantation' is still missing. More consistent terminology and plantation typologies are needed to enable comparability between plantation types and related ecological and socio-economic outcomes. Recent Findings Previous research has provided some suggestions for a plantation typology, but a more systematic approach to typology formulation is still needed. Furthermore, previously proposed typologies almost exclusively deal with plantation forestry, ignoring the links with other plantation types. Summary The aim of this review is to identify a comprehensive set of variables that can describe the range of different plantation types, specifically (but not exclusively) in the context of forestry. The typology was developed based on a participatory and iterative analytical process involving several expert stakeholders. The variables that contribute to constructing the typology are presented and explained in light of their influence on ecological and socio-economic outcomes. Variables include the following: (1) characteristics of planted organism (tree/non-tree), (2) species composition (monoculture/mixed), (3) origin of planted species (native/exotic), (4) plantation purpose (economic, social and environmental), (5) plantation intended use (provisioning, regulating and cultural services), (6) land ownership (public and private), (7) management responsibility (public and private), (8) management intensity (high-medium-low), (9) scale (large-medium-small) and composition (monoculture/mixed) in landscape, (10) original initiator of plantation establishment (external and internal) and (11) level of institutional arrangements (high-medium-low). The typology is then tested using three case studies. A code system is presented that scholars and practitioners can use to classify plantation types and provide the basis to aid further analyses.