Continuous Cover Forestry in Finland – Recent Research Results

Abstract

The current official silvicultural instructions of Finland recommend even-aged rotation forest management (RFM) combined with low thinning and artificial regeneration. However, the direction is gradually changing towards increasing freedom and flexibility in forest management. The first sign of a new silvicultural era was the gradual approval of high thinning, which is now accepted although it was strictly forbidden in the past. As a further step, uneven-aged management and other forms of continuous cover forestry (CCF) are now gaining popularity and acceptance. The harmful impacts of clear felling and plantation forestry on the recreational value and biodiversity of forests have been increasingly emphasized. In addition, encouraging results on the yield and profitability of CCF have been obtained recently. This chapter reviews those results. The review shows that CCF is often more profitable than even-aged management. The superiority of CCF increases if non-wood benefits are included in the analysis. The growth rates of most Finnish forests are too low to warrant the high stand establishment and management costs of even-aged plantation forestry. If the forest landowner wants to practice forestry that is profitable (without state subsidies) also with high discounting rates, on poor growing sites and in the northern parts of Finland, her only option is continuous cover management.