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- Eriksson, Ljusk Ola, et al.
(author)
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A Tool for Long-Term Forest Stand Projections of Swedish Forests
- 2022
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In: Forests. - : MDPI. - 1999-4907. ; 13:6
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The analysis of forest management strategies at landscape and regional levels forms a vital part of finding viable directions that will satisfy the many services expected of forests. This article describes the structure and content of a stand simulator, GAYA, which has been adapted to Swedish conditions. The main advantage of the GAYA implementation compared to other resources is that it generates a large number of management programmes within a limited time frame. This is valuable in cases where the management programmes appear as activities in linear programming (LP) problems. Two methods that are engaged in the projections, a climate change response function and a soil carbon model, are designed to complement other methods, offering transparency and computational effectiveness. GAYA is benchmarked against projections from the Heureka system for a large set of National Forest Inventory (NFI) plots. The long-term increment for the entire NFI set is smaller for GAYA compared with Heureka, which can be attributed to different approaches for modelling the establishment of new forests. The carbon pool belonging to living trees shows the same trend when correlated to standing volume. The soil carbon pool of GAYA increases with increased standing volume, while Heureka maintains the same amount over the 100-year projection period.
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| 3. |
- Kraxner, Florian, et al.
(author)
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Planning the future forests: managing for wildlife in a climate constrained landscape
- 2017
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In: Book of Abstracts. - 9783902762887 ; , s. 655-
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Multipurpose functionality is a paradigm when it comes to forest management. This includes sustainability, resilience, stand stability, wildlife management, recreation, clean water and air, or healthy soils - to name a few. The world is aiming at a maximum global warming of 2-deg by 2100, but cumulative emissions are still rising. Higher temperatures are associated with higher risks of extreme events such as storm, flood, droughts, pests and fires etc. - and at the same time, forest systems are key for any mitigation activity to avoid such dangerous climate change. But how will a managed forest look like in the future? How can we understand the underlying dynamics and make our forests fit for the increased need for carbon storage, biomass for energy and sustainable wood and non-wood forest products like game, while maintaining biodiversity, recreational and protected areas. Moreover, we need to address all challenges on limited land and establish action from policy development allthe way to their implementation within a short time frame. Based on Sweden's forests, traditionally considered a role model for successfully bridging a multitude of demands, we present a modeling approach that should serve as a planning tool for enhancing forests' risk resilience and capacity of integrating diverse demands and different ecosystem-services. Guided by the expertise of Sweden's Environmental Protection Agency, national forest and habitat shift models from SLU and KTH will be linked with global land use models and engineering tools from IIASA. Hereby, special emphasis will be put on ecosystem services from wildlife, different scenarios of forest intensification and the optimization of biomass for bioenergy production. First estimates show that spatially explicit modeling can substantially support decision making by optimizing multipurpose use of both managed and protected areas and steering habitat shift for maintaining biodiversity and improving wildlife (game)management.
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| 4. |
- Nolander, Carl
(author)
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Carbon Sink or Energy Source : Economic perspectives on future uses of forest resources in Sweden
- 2021
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Abstract Forests and the resources they offer have been important for the Swedish economy for a long time, and the forest industry remains a large part of the manufacturing industry even as the economy is becoming more service-based. Forests are also increasingly seen as an important source of biofuels that can be used to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels and to reach the target for a carbon neutral economy by the year 2050. Additionally, the preservation of forests for their various ecosystem services remains high on the political agenda. This thesis examines important economic issues of ecosystem services and bioenergy from forests as well as the goal conflicts within forestry in Sweden in four separate papers. The aim is to contribute to the research on optimal social use of Sweden’s forests and the future of forestry when considering ecosystem services and the trade-off between demands for different forest products. This is particularly important since Sweden is moving towards a circular bio-economy where forests are becoming increasingly important as a fuel and material source. The first paper presents the current state of ecosystem service valuation and the challenges that needs to be addressed in the field when moving forward. The second paper applies the methodology of benefit transfer in a spatially explicit context to provide maps of ecosystem services for Sweden. The results are reasonable compared to previous estimations and the main contribution is the mapping of the spatial distribution of carbon sequestration and recreation in Sweden. The third paper focuses on the market for biomass and examines the elasticity for demand for the different sectors that uses forest biomass as an input. The findings are that the pulp and heating sectors are more sensitive towards price changes, while sawmills would to a larger extent be able to transfer increasing costs to their customers. This is in line with the expected outcome that as demand for biofuels increase, the heating sector would compete for biomass mainly with the pulp sector, rather than the sawmill industry. The fourth paper examines the effect of internalizing carbon sequestration on the rotation periods of forests in Sweden, as well as the effect of increased biofuel production. The results are that internalizing carbon sequestration would lengthen rotation periods, but there are large regional differences, and a carbon price that would barely increase rotation in southern Sweden may lead to infinite rotations in northern Sweden. This thesis recommends joint optimization of ecosystem services with market values but recommends against paying forest-owners for the carbon their forests sequester. While carbon storage would increase, a large part of the money would go towards paying for sequestration that already would occur in absence of the payment for ecosystem services scheme. Additionally, it would be difficult to price the subsidy/tax on a level that extends rotation in all the country without it leading to infinite rotation periods in any parts of the countries, which would have dramatic effects for the local forest industry. The goal conflicts within the Swedish forest sector needs to be examined further, going forward. This thesis touch upon the complexity with some of these goal conflicts, both between industry such as the pulp and heating sectors, but also between the environmental goals of “Sustainable Forests” and “Reduced Climate Impact”, as well as with recreational uses of forests. There is certainly potential for synergy in some cases, the fourth paper showed favorable outcomes when optimizing for timber, biofuels and carbon sequestration, but Payments for Ecosystem Services schemes are expensive and may not be the most efficient use of taxpayer money.
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