We introduce a special issue that aims to simultaneously motivate interest in uncertainty assessment (UA) and reduce the barriers practitioners face in conducting it. The issue, “Demonstrating transparent, feasible, and useful uncertainty assessment in ecosystem services modeling,” responds to findings from a 2016 workshop of academics and practitioners that identified challenges and potential solutions to enhance the practice of uncertainty assessment in the ES community. Participants identified that one important gap was the lack of a compelling set of cases showing that UA can be feasibly conducted at varying levels of sophistication, and that such assessment can usefully inform decision-relevant modeling conclusions. This article orients the reader to the 11 other articles that comprise the special issue, and which span multiple methods and application domains, all with an explicit consideration of uncertainty. We highlight the value of UA demonstrated in the articles, including changing decisions, facilitating transparency, and clarifying the nature of evidence. We conclude by suggesting ways to promote further adoption of uncertainty analysis in ecosystem service assessments. These include: Easing the analytic workflows involved in UA while guarding against rote analyses, applying multiple models to the same problem, and learning about the conduct and value of UA from other disciplines.

我们引入了一个特殊问题，旨在同时激发人们对不确定性评估（UA）的兴趣，并减少从业人员进行不确定性评估所面临的障碍。问题“在生态系统服务建模中展示透明，可行和有用的不确定性评估”，是对2016年学者和实践者研讨会的发现的回应，该研讨会确定了挑战和可能的解决方案，以增强ES社区的不确定性评估实践。与会者指出，一个重要的差距是缺乏一套令人信服的案例，这些案例表明UA可以在不同的复杂程度上可行地进行，并且这种评估可以为决策相关的建模结论提供有用的信息。本文将读者定向到构成该特刊的其他11篇文章中，并且涵盖多个方法和应用领域，所有这些都明确考虑了不确定性。我们强调文章中展示的UA的价值，包括更改决策，促进透明度和阐明证据的性质。我们通过建议在生态系统服务评估中促进不确定性分析的进一步采用的方法来得出结论。其中包括：缓解UA中涉及的分析工作流，同时防止死记硬背分析，对同一问题应用多种模型，并了解行为 我们通过建议在生态系统服务评估中促进不确定性分析的进一步采用的方法来得出结论。其中包括：缓解UA中涉及的分析工作流，同时防止死记硬背分析，对同一问题应用多种模型，并了解行为 我们通过建议在生态系统服务评估中促进不确定性分析的进一步采用的方法来得出结论。其中包括：缓解UA中涉及的分析工作流，同时防止死记硬背分析，对同一问题应用多种模型，并了解行为和其他学科的UA的价值。