Abstract
Research Highlights: We show the difference in the long-term effects on economic and ecological forest values between four forest management scenarios of a large representative forest landscape. The scenarios were largely formulated by stakeholders representing the main views on how to manage north-European forests. Background and Objectives: Views on how to balance forest management between wood production and biodiversity differ widely between different stakeholder groups. We aim to show the long-term consequences of stakeholder-defined management scenarios, in terms of ecological and economic forest values. Materials and Methods: We simulated management scenarios for a forest landscape in Sweden, based on the management objectives and strategies of key stakeholders. We specifically investigated the difference in economic forest values coupled to wood supply and ecological indicators coupled to structural biodiversity between the scenarios over a 100-year period. The indicators were net present value, harvest, growing stock and increment, along with deadwood volume, the density of large trees, area of old forests and mature broadleaf-rich forests. Results: We show that the scenarios have widely different outcomes in terms of the studied indicators, and that differences in indicator outcome were largely due to different distributions in management regimes, i.e., the proportion of forest left unmanaged or under even-aged management or continuous cover forest, as well as specific retention practices. Retention and continuous cover forestry mitigate the negative effects that clear-cut forestry has upon biodiversity. Conclusions: We found that an increase in the forest area under the continuous cover forestry regime could be a cost-efficient way to increase structural diversity in managed boreal forests. On the other hand, no single management regime performed best with respect to all indicators, which means that a mixture of several management regimes is needed to balance conflicting objectives. We also show that the trade-off between economic and ecological indicators was not directly proportional, meaning that an increase in structural biodiversity may be obtained at a proportionally low cost with appropriate management planning.
Highlights
More than half of the world’s forests are managed for wood production, often in combination with other uses [1]
We aim to show the difference in the long-term effects of economic and ecological forest values between a set of stakeholder-defined management scenarios of a boreal forest landscape
We show that the scenarios have widely different outcomes in terms of the studied indicators, and that differences in indicator outcome between scenarios were largely due to different distributions in management regimes between the scenarios
Summary
More than half of the world’s forests are managed for wood production, often in combination with other uses [1]. Management regimes differ widely in their impact upon biodiversity [6], suggesting that the conflict between wood production and biodiversity conservation can be alleviated by well-informed management decisions. There is still limited knowledge on how forest management can help to reduce the trade-off between wood production and biodiversity conservation in the long term, and views on how to manage the forest differ widely between different stakeholder groups [7,8,9]. Participatory approaches, where realistic and possibly implementable scenarios addressing forest management are investigated, are rare [10] This is unfortunate as recent examples exist of the successful implementation of forest decision support tools in participatory settings for supporting stakeholder negotiations [17,18,19]
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