More forest biofuels from Jämtland - ecosystem services tradeoffs

• With increasing European demand for biofuels, the interest for forest biomass from the northernboreal forests of Sweden will increase. Traditional optimization parameters like carbon footprint orlife cycle energy use will not be enough to ensure the sustainability of forest biofuel production inSweden. Impacts on ecosystem services must also be assessed.Swedish forests today have annual volume growth surpassing harvesting. This is partly thebackground to the fact that land occupation parameters has not been considered relevant when itcomes to forestry in Sweden; the general forms of forest management practices used has made alsoproduction forestry seen as ‘nature’ (e.g. about three quarters of Swedish forests are certified byFSC, PEFC or both). With increasing competition for forest resources, harvesting pressure andintensity of forestry will likely increase, and the view ‘forests is nature’ will have to change.In the Swedish county of Jämtland there is 3.4 million ha of forest area, and forestry is an importantindustry. At the same time the county also has a large tourism industry, to a substantial extent forskiing but also for experiences of undisturbed nature, hiking, hunting, fishing et c. The county is alsomarketing itself as a “Quality Food Area” having a focus on traditional, small scale and localproduction of food products and food experiences, with the clean and uncontaminated environmentfor agriculture, game and fish as a cornerstone. More intensive forestry may create conflictsbetween such enterprises related to cultural ecosystem services and those provisioning servicespushed for biofuel production.We need to make possible the inclusion of negative impacts on ecosystem services from biofuelproduction as well as inclusion of tradeoffs between different types of e.g. cultural ecosystemservices in sustainability assessments of increased forest biofuel harvesting and production inJämtland.Before

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NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap -- Annan geovetenskap och miljövetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences -- Other Earth and Related Environmental Sciences (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Naturresursteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Environmental Engineering (hsv//eng)

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