Abstract
Abstract. The bioeconomy has an increasing role to play in climate change mitigation and the sustainable development of national economies. In Finland, a forested country, over 50 % of the current bioeconomy relies on the sustainable management and utilization of forest resources. Wind storms are a major risk that forests are exposed to and high-spatial-resolution analysis of the most vulnerable locations can produce risk assessment of forest management planning. In this paper, we examine the feasibility of the wind multiplier approach for downscaling of maximum wind speed, using 20 m spatial resolution CORINE land-use dataset and high-resolution digital elevation data. A coarse spatial resolution estimate of the 10-year return level of maximum wind speed was obtained from the ERA-Interim reanalyzed data. Using a geospatial re-mapping technique the data were downscaled to 26 meteorological station locations to represent very diverse environments. Applying a comparison, we find that the downscaled 10-year return levels represent 66 % of the observed variation among the stations examined. In addition, the spatial variation in wind-multiplier-downscaled 10-year return level wind was compared with the WAsP model-simulated wind. The heterogeneous test area was situated in northern Finland, and it was found that the major features of the spatial variation were similar, but in some locations, there were relatively large differences. The results indicate that the wind multiplier method offers a pragmatic and computationally feasible tool for identifying at a high spatial resolution those locations with the highest forest wind damage risks. It can also be used to provide the necessary wind climate information for wind damage risk model calculations, thus making it possible to estimate the probability of predicted threshold wind speeds for wind damage and consequently the probability (and amount) of wind damage for certain forest stand configurations.
Highlights
The forest-based bioeconomy plays an important role in climate change mitigation (Kilpeläinen et al, 2016), and in a forested country like Finland, over 50 % of the current bioeconomy relies on the sustainable management and utilization of forest resources
A comparison of the ERA-Interim and wind-multiplier-based assessment of 10-year return levels of wind speed to the estimates based on measurements for the test locations (Table 1, Fig. 6) revealed that for these locations, and representing different kinds of terrain and elevations, the wind multiplier approach improved the local wind speed return level estimates remarkably (R2 = 0.66)
When we looked at the spatial variation in a 10-year return level of wind speed inside the test area, we can see areas having wind speeds higher than the threshold of 12 m s−1 found on local topographic formations, at the edges of open terrain, and at high-elevation locations
Summary
The forest-based bioeconomy plays an important role in climate change mitigation (Kilpeläinen et al, 2016), and in a forested country like Finland, over 50 % of the current bioeconomy relies on the sustainable management and utilization of forest resources. In Scandinavia, forest grows relatively slowly, and it takes typically 50–100 years from forest cultivation to final harvesting. During this long period the projected climate change (Ruosteenoja et al, 2016) may largely alter the growing conditions, affecting the survival and productivity of forests (Kellomäki et al, 2008; Bärring et al, 2017). A warming climate is expected to increase the volume of growing stock of Finnish forests due to increasing forest growth (see, e.g., Kellomäki et al, 2008). Warming is expected to increase certain risks to forests.
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