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- Angelstam, Per, et al.
(författare)
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Wood production and biodiversity conservation are rival forestry objectives in Europe's Baltic Sea Region
- 2018
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Ingår i: Ecosphere. - : Wiley. - 2150-8925. ; 9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The policy term green infrastructure highlights the need to maintain functional ecosystems as a foundation for sustainable societies. Because forests are the main natural ecosystems in Europe, it is crucial to understand the extent to which forest landscape management delivers functional green infrastructures. We used the steep west-east gradient in forest landscape history, land ownership, and political culture within northern Europe's Baltic Sea Region to assess regional profiles of benefits delivered by forest landscapes. The aim was to support policy-makers and planners with evidence-based knowledge about the current conditions for effective wood production and biodiversity conservation. We developed and modeled four regional-level indicators for sustained yield wood production and four for biodiversity conservation using public spatial data. The western case study regions in Sweden and Latvia had high forest management intensity with balanced forest losses and gains which was spatially correlated, thus indicating an even stand age class distribution at the local scale and therefore long-term sustained yields. In contrast, the eastern case study regions in Belarus and Russia showed spatial segregation of areas with forest losses and gains. Regarding biodiversity conservation indicators, the west-east gradient was reversed. In the Russian, Belarusian, and Latvian case study regions, tree species composition was more natural than in Sweden, and the size of contiguous areas without forest loss was larger. In all four case study regions, 54-85% of the total land base consisted of forest cover, which is above critical fragmentation thresholds for forest landscape fragmentation. The results show that green infrastructures for wood production and biodiversity conservation are inversely related among the four case study regions, and thus rival. While restoration for biodiversity conservation is needed in the west, intensified use of wood and biomass is possible in the east. However, a cautious approach should be applied because intensification of wood production threatens biodiversity. We discuss the barriers and bridges for spatial planning in countries with different types of land ownership and political cultures and stress the need for a landscape approach based on evidence-based collaborative learning processes that include both different academic disciplines and stakeholders that represent different sectors and levels of governance.
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| 2. |
- Elbakidze, Marine, et al.
(författare)
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Towards Functional Green Infrastructure in the Baltic Sea Region : Knowledge Production and Learning Across Borders
- 2018
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Ingår i: Ecosystem Services from Forest Landscapes. - Cham : Springer. - 9783319745145 - 9783319745152 ; , s. 57-87
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Natural capital is the foundation for delivering multiple ecosystem services important for biodiversity and human wellbeing. Functional green infrastructure (GI) is one of the land management approaches to secure the sustainable use of natural capital. This chapter presents the outcomes of a integrative research for knowledge production and learning towards functional GI in the Baltic Sea Region. The overview of attempts to develop functional GI in Sweden, Latvia, Belarus and the Russian Federation, the countries with different contexts, illustrates similar sets of challenges in the maintenance of GI functions for both biodiversity and human wellbeing. The main challenges are (1) sustaining sufficient amounts of representative ecosystems with functional connectivity, (2) maintaining land management practices that support natural and seminatural areas important for human wellbeing and (3) development of stakeholder cross-sectoral collaboration laboratories towards a sustainable use of ecosystem services across the Baltic Sea Region. To deal with these challenges, there are at least five main sets of opportunities: (1) favourable international policies towards functional GI, (2) the abundance of applied knowledge in biodiversity conservation needed for GI’s integrated spatial planning, (3) existing landscape approach initiatives with rich experience in sustainable management and governance of landscapes, (4) the potential of landscape restoration projects and (5) transdisciplinary research projects that have been practised in the Baltic Sea Region. Stakeholders have much to gain from increased multilateral, learning-based collaborations regarding all aspects of sustainable forest landscapes. Such collaborations could serve as laboratories for cross-border governance and management in the Baltic Sea Region.
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| 3. |
- Naumov, Vladimir, et al.
(författare)
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How to reconcile wood production and biodiversity conservation? The Pan-European boreal forest history gradient as an "experiment"
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Environmental Management. - : Elsevier BV. - 0301-4797 .- 1095-8630. ; 218, s. 1-13
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There are currently competing demands on Europe's forests and the finite resources and services that they can offer. Forestry intensification that aims at mitigating climate change and biodiversity conservation is one example. Whether or not these two objectives compete can be evaluated by comparative studies of forest landscapes with different histories. We test the hypothesis that indicators of wood production and biodiversity conservation are inversely related in a gradient of long to short forestry intensification histories. Forest management data containing stand age, volume and tree species were used to model the opportunity for wood production and biodiversity conservation in five north European forest regions representing a gradient in landscape history from very long in the West and short in the East. Wood production indicators captured the supply of coniferous wood and total biomass, as well as current accessibility by transport infrastructure. Biodiversity conservation indicators were based on modelling habitat network functionality for focal bird species dependent on different combinations of stand age and tree species composition representing naturally dynamic forests. In each region we randomly sampled 25 individual 100-km(2) areas with contiguous forest cover. Regarding wood production, Sweden's Bergslagen region had the largest areas of coniferous wood, followed by Vitebsk in Belarus and Zemgale in Latvia. NW Russia's case study regions in Pskov and Komi had the lowest values, except for the biomass indicator. The addition of forest accessibility for transportation made the Belarusian and Swedish study region most suitable for wood and biomass production, followed by Latvia and two study regions in NW Russian. Regarding biodiversity conservation, the overall rank among regions was opposite. Mixed and deciduous habitats were functional in Russia, Belarus and Latvia. Old Scots pine and Norway spruce habitats were only functional in Komi. Thus, different regional forest histories provide different challenges in terms of satisfying both wood production and biodiversity conservation objectives in a forest management unit. These regional differences in northern Europe create opportunities for exchanging experiences among different regional contexts about how to achieve both objectives. We discuss this in the context of land-sharing versus land-sparing. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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