Ecosystem services (ES) are the benefits that people obtain from nature, including food, fiber, and freshwater; recreation; and regulation of climate, disease, and floods. A Canadian future of shared health and prosperity will depend on our ability to manage ecosystems and all the services they provide for human well-being now and in the future. In working landscapes – land actively used for production of resources such as food, fish, energy, or forest products – the focus has been on the cheap, reliable, and efficient production of individual ES. But these efforts often overlook the fact that landscapes simultaneously produce multiple ES that interact in complex, dynamic ways leading to increases in a few services (e.g., food, timber, energy) at the cost of declines in many others (e.g., flood control, recreation, carbon storage). Reaching consensus about how to provide for a variety of present and future human ES needs equitably, while safeguarding sustainable ecosystems for the future, requires evidence-based management strategies and a scalable natural resource science that embraces the complexity of social-ecological systems. Our collection draws on a unique network of academics and decision-makers recently funded by NSERC’s Strategic Network program. The mission of the new network, NSERC ResNet, is to transform Canada’s capacity to monitor, model, and manage its working landscapes and all the ES they provide to improve decision making. Ultimately, ResNet hopes to provide for long-term well-being of Canadians by improving integrated decision-making for working landscapes in Canada, and to showcase Canada as a model system for understanding these issues elsewhere. Our special issue introduces the network, our knowledge about its landscapes (case studies) and develops the first integrated understanding of its themes.