Evaluating a hierarchical approach to landscape-level harvest scheduling

Forest planning at the landscape level has the potential to become a large intractable problem. In Finland, Metsähallitus (the state enterprise that manages federally owned land) creates strategic plans to determine the appropriate harvest level. While these plans are feasible, they are not implementable in practice as the harvests are scattered temporally and spatially. Requiring that harvests be organized both temporally and spatially for practical implementation can result in an intractable problem. Through a hierarchical approach, the problem can be organized into steps in which the intractable problem is broken down into smaller easily solvable parts. As an approximation technique, th…

More is more? : Forest management allocation at different spatial scales to mitigate conflicts between ecosystem services

Context: Multi-objective management can mitigate conflicts among land-use objectives. However, the effectiveness of a multi-objective solution depends on the spatial scale at which land-use is optimized. This is because the ecological variation within the planning region influences the potential for site-specific prioritization according to the different objectives. Objectives: We optimized the allocation of forest management strategies to maximize the joint production of two conflicting objectives, timber production and carbon storage, at increasing spatial scales. We examined the impacts of the extent of the planning region on the severity of the conflict, the potential for its mitigation…

Incorporating stand level risk management options into forest decision support systems

Aim of study:  To examine methods of incorporating risk and uncertainty to stand level forest decisions. Area of study: A case study examines a small forest holding from Jonkoping, Sweden. Material and methods: We incorporate empirically estimated uncertainty into the simulation through a Monte Carlo approach when simulating the forest stands for the next 100 years. For the iterations of the Monte Carlo approach, errors were incorporated into the input data which was simulated according to the Heureka decision support system. Both the Value at Risk and the Conditional Value at Risk of the net present value are evaluated for each simulated stand. Main results: Visual representation of the er…

Mitigating forest biodiversity and ecosystem service losses in the era of bio-based economy

Abstract Forests play a crucial role in the transition towards a bioeconomy by providing biomass to substitute for fossil-based materials and energy. However, a policy-policy conflict exists between the desire to increase the utilization of bio based renewable resources and the desire to protect and conserve biodiversity. Increasing forest harvest levels to meet the needs of the bioeconomy may conflict with biodiversity protection and ecosystem services provided by forests. Through an optimization framework, we examined trade-offs between increasing the extraction of timber resources, and the impacts on biodiversity and non-wood ecosystem services, and investigated possibilities to reconcil…

Data-Based Forest Management with Uncertainties and Multiple Objectives

In this paper, we present an approach of employing multiobjective optimization to support decision making in forest management planning. The planning is based on data representing so-called stands, each consisting of homogeneous parts of the forest, and simulations of how the trees grow in the stands under different treatment options. Forest planning concerns future decisions to be made that include uncertainty. We employ as objective functions both the expected values of incomes and biodiversity as well as the value at risk for both of these objectives. In addition, we minimize the risk level for both the income value and the biodiversity value. There is a tradeoff between the expected val…

Enhancing Resilience of Boreal Forests Through Management Under Global Change: a Review

Abstract Purpose of Review Boreal forests provide a wide range of ecosystem services that are important to society. The boreal biome is experiencing the highest rates of warming on the planet and increasing demand for forest products. Here, we review how changes in climate and its associated extreme events (e.g., windstorms) are putting at risk the capacity of these forests to continue providing ecosystem services. We further analyze the role of forest management to increase forest resilience to the combined effects of climate change and extreme events. Recent Findings Enhancing forest resilience recently gained a lot of interest from theoretical perspective. Yet, it remains unclear how to …

Evaluating a hierarchical approach to landscape level harvest scheduling

Forest planning at the landscape level has the potential to become a large intractable problem. In Finland, Metsähallitus (the state enterprise that manages federally owned land) creates strategic plans to determine the appropriate harvest level. While these plans are feasible, they are not implementable in practice as the harvests are scattered temporally and spatially. Requiring that harvests be organized both temporally and spatially for practical implementation can result in an intractable problem. Through a hierarchical approach, the problem can be organized into steps in which the intractable problem is broken down into smaller easily solvable parts. As an approximation technique, the…

Sectoral policies as drivers of forest management and ecosystems services: A case study in Bavaria, Germany

European countries have national sectoral polices to regulate and promote the provision of a wide range of forest ecosystems services (FES). However, potential incoherencies among these policies can negatively affect the efficient provision of FES. In this work, we evaluated the coherence among three national policies from Germany and their ability to effectively provide FES in the future: the Forest Strategy 2020 (FS), the National Strategy on Biological Diversity (BDS), and the German National Policy Strategy on Bioeconomy (BES). Using forest inventory data from the Federal State of Bavaria, we simulated a range of forest management options under three climate trajectories for 100 years i…

Towards constructing a Pareto front approximation for use in interactive forest management planning

The selection of an appropriate multi-objective forest management plan can be a difficult task due to the vast number of alternatives available to the decision maker (DM). The complexity of the task depends e.g. on how clear the preferences of the DM are. For those DMs who do not have clear preferences, interactive methods of forest planning could assist in clarifying preferences and guiding the selection in an efficient fashion. Interactive planning methods are useful when the DM needs to consider a wide range of efficient solutions quickly. With large forest holdings or with complicated forest management goals, the development of new forest plans can become a rather computationally demand…

Comment on “A simple way to incorporate uncertainty and risk into forest harvest scheduling”

In a recent research article, Robinson et al. (2016) described a method of estimating uncertainty of harvesting outcomes by analyzing the historical yield to the associated prediction for a large number of harvest operations. We agree with this analysis, and consider it a useful tool to integrate estimates of uncertainty into the optimization process. The authors attempt to manage the risk using two different methods, based on deterministic integer linear programming. The first method focused on maximizing the 10th quantile of the distribution of predicted volume subject to area constraint, while the second method focused on minimizing the variation of total quantity of volume harvested sub…

Integrating risk management tools for regional forest planning : an interactive multiobjective value at risk approach

In this paper, we present an approach employing multiobjective optimization to support decision making in forest management planning under risk. The primary objectives are biodiversity and timber cash flow, evaluated from two perspectives: the expected value and the value-at-risk (VaR). In addition, the risk level for both the timber cash flow and biodiversity values are included as objectives. With our approach, we highlight the trade-off between the expected value and the VaR, as well as between the VaRs of the two objectives of interest. We employ an interactive method in which a decision maker iteratively provides preference information to find the most preferred management plan and lea…

Potential of using data assimilation to support forest planning

Uncertainty in forest information typically results in economic and ecological losses as a consequence of suboptimal management decisions. Several techniques have been proposed to handle such uncertainties. However, these techniques are often complex and costly. Data assimilation (DA) has recently been advocated as a tool that may reduce the uncertainty, thereby improving the quality of forest planning results. It offers an opportunity to make use of all new sources of information in a systematic way and thus provides more accurate and up-to-date information to forest planning. In this study, we refer to literature on handling uncertainties in forest planning, as well as related literature…

Data-Driven Interactive Multiobjective Optimization Using a Cluster-Based Surrogate in a Discrete Decision Space

In this paper, a clustering based surrogate is proposed to be used in offline data-driven multiobjective optimization to reduce the size of the optimization problem in the decision space. The surrogate is combined with an interactive multiobjective optimization approach and it is applied to forest management planning with promising results. peerReviewed

Future supply of boreal forest ecosystem services is driven by management rather than by climate change

Forests provide a wide variety of ecosystem services (ES) to society. The boreal biome is experiencing the highest rates of warming on the planet and increasing demand for forest products. To foresee how to maximize the adaptation of boreal forests to future warmer conditions and growing demands of forest products, we need a better understanding of the relative importance of forest management and climate change on the supply of ecosystem services. Here, using Finland as a boreal forest case study, we assessed the potential supply of a wide range of ES (timber, bilberry, cowberry, mushrooms, carbon storage, scenic beauty, species habitat availability and deadwood) given seven management regi…

Continuous cover forestry is a cost-efficient tool to increase multifunctionality of boreal production forests in Fennoscandia

Earlier research has suggested that the diversification of silvicultural strategies is a cost-efficient tool to ensure multifunctionality in production forests. This study compared the effects of continuous cover forestry and conventional rotation forestry on ecosystem services and biodiversity in boreal forests in Finland. We simulated over 25,000 commercial forest stands for 100 years under continuous cover and rotation forest management. Forests without management were used as a reference. We compared the effects of silvicultural practices over space and time on ecosystem services, biodiversity indicators and multifunctionality. Our results revealed that continuous cover forestry was bet…

Mitigating forest biodiversity and ecosystem service losses in the era of bio-based economy

Forests play a crucial role in the transition towards a bioeconomy by providing biomass to substitute for fossil-based materials and energy. However, a policy-policy conflict exists between the desire to increase the utilization of bio based renewable resources and the desire to protect and conserve biodiversity. Increasing forest harvest levels to meet the needs of the bioeconomy may conflict with biodiversity protection and ecosystem services provided by forests. Through an optimization framework, we examined trade-offs between increasing the extraction of timber resources, and the impacts on biodiversity and non-wood ecosystem services, and investigated possibilities to reconcile trade-o…

Landowner preferences and conservation prioritization : response to Nielsen et al

Building up an ecologically sustainable and socially desirable post-COVID-19 future

AbstractCOVID-19 crisis has emphasized how poorly prepared humanity is to cope with global disasters. However, this crisis also offers a unique opportunity to move towards a more sustainable and equitable future. Here, we identify the underlying environmental, social, and economic chronic causes of the COVID-19 crisis. We argue in favour of a holistic view to initiate a socio-economic transition to improve the prospects for global sustainability and human well-being. Alternative approaches to “Business-As-Usual” for guiding the transition are already available for implementation. Yet, to ensure a successful and just transition, we need to change our priorities towards environmental integrit…

Guidelines for risk management in forest planning – what is risk and when is risk management useful?

Managing forest resources occurs under various sources of uncertainty. Depending on the management problem, this uncertainty may have a substantial impact on the quality of the solution. As our knowledge on the sources and magnitude of uncertainty improves, integrating this knowledge into the development of management plans becomes increasingly useful, as additional information can improve the decision-making process. This adjustment requires a fundamental shift in how planning problems are viewed: instead of interpreting risk management as a technique needed only for addressing problems with natural hazards, risk management should be an integral part of most planning problems. Managing ri…

Integrating risk management tools for regional forest planning: an interactive multiobjective value-at-risk approach

In this paper, we present an approach employing multiobjective optimization to support decision making in forest management planning under risk. The primary objectives are biodiversity and timber cash flow, evaluated from two perspectives: the expected value and the value-at-risk (VaR). In addition, the risk level for both the timber cash flow and biodiversity values are included as objectives. With our approach, we highlight the trade-off between the expected value and the VaR, as well as between the VaRs of the two objectives of interest. We employ an interactive method in which a decision maker iteratively provides preference information to find the most preferred management plan and le…

Forest management optimization across spatial scales to reconcile economic and conservation objectives

Conflicts between biodiversity conservation and resource production can be mitigated by multi-objective management planning. Optimizing management for multiple objectives over larger land areas likely entails trading off the practicability of the process against the goodness of the solution. It is therefore worthwhile to resolve how large areas are required as management planning regions to reconcile conflicting objectives as effectively as possible. We aimed to reveal how the extent of forestry planning regions impacts the potential to mitigate a forestry-conservation conflict in Finland, represented as a trade-off between harvest income and deadwood availability. We used forecasted data f…

Using uncertain preferential information from stakeholders to assess the acceptability of alternative forest management plans

In forest management planning, participatory planning processes are often encouraged as a means to acquire relevant information and to enhance the stakeholders' acceptability of alternative plans. This requires the aggregation of the stakeholders' preferences that can be done in a wide variety of manners. The aggregation process strives to reduce the information into a single set of preferences that simplifies the information and allows for the use of discrete decision support tools. Depending on how the preferences are aggregated, a wide range of plan rankings can emerge. Although this range of ranking complicates the issue of plan selection, it does highlight the uncertainty involved in a…

Interpreting wind damage risk-how multifunctional forest management impacts standing timber at risk of wind felling

AbstractLandscape multifunctionality, a widely accepted challenge for boreal forests, aims to simultaneously provide timber, non-timber ecosystem services, and shelter for biodiversity. However, multifunctionality requires the use of novel forest management regimes optimally combined over the landscape, and an increased share of sets asides. It remains unclear how this combination will shape stand vulnerability to wind disturbances and exposed timber volume. We combined forest growth simulations and multi-objective optimization to create alternative landscape level forest management scenarios. Management choices were restricted to 1) rotation forestry, 2) continuous cover forestry, and 3) a…

Continuous cover forestry is a cost-efficient tool to increase multifunctionality of boreal production forests in Fennoscandia

Abstract Earlier research has suggested that the diversification of silvicultural strategies is a cost-efficient tool to ensure multifunctionality in production forests. This study compared the effects of continuous cover forestry and conventional rotation forestry on ecosystem services and biodiversity in boreal forests in Finland. We simulated over 25,000 commercial forest stands for 100 years under continuous cover and rotation forest management. Forests without management were used as a reference. We compared the effects of silvicultural practices over space and time on ecosystem services, biodiversity indicators and multifunctionality. Our results revealed that continuous cover forestr…

Sectoral policies cause incoherence in forest management and ecosystem service provisioning

Various national policies guide forest use, but often with competing policy objectives leading to divergent management paradigms. Incoherent policies may negatively impact the sustainable provision of forest ecosystem services (FES), and forest multifunctionality. There is uncertainty among policymakers about the impacts of policies on the real world. We translated the policy documents of Finland into scenarios including the quantitative demands for FES, representing: the national forest strategy (NFS), the biodiversity strategy (BDS), and the bioeconomy strategy (BES). We simulated a Finland-wide systematic sample of forest stands with alternative management regimes and climate change. Fin…

High boreal forest multifunctionality requires continuous cover forestry as a dominant management

Intensive extraction of forest resources lowers biodiversity and endangers the functioning of forest ecosystems. As such, alternative management regimes have emerged, aspiring to promote forest biodiversity and nature protection in managed forests. Among them, continuous cover forestry, (i.e. selective logging), has received considerable attention and is being promoted by some researchers and NGOs. Yet, the full consequences of banning clear-cuts (i.e. rotation forestry) and replacing it entirely with continuous cover forest remains uncertain. We explore how restricting forest management alternatives (either rotation forestry or continuous cover forestry) will affect landscape-scale forest …

A landscape approach to planetary well-being

“Landscape” refers to a perceivable spatial level shaped by socio-ecological interactions and represents the systems where people live. Human societies have globally transformed landscapes to meet their needs, e.g., nutrition or shelter, according to cultural preferences. This human domination of land has resulted in considerable competition for space with other lifeforms, driving biodiversity loss through land-use change and intensification, as well as coming into conflict with planetary well-being. Recent research has highlighted the relevance of the landscape level when articulating human activities with and in their environment and maintaining human and nonhuman cohabitation. Indeed, th…

Value of information in multiple criteria decision making: an application to forest conservation

Abstract Developing environmental conservation plans involves assessing trade-offs between the benefits and costs of conservation. The benefits of conservation can be established with ecological inventories or estimated based on previously collected information. Conducting ecological inventories can be costly, and the additional information may not justify these costs. To clarify the value of these inventories, we investigate the multiple criteria value of information associated with the acquisition of improved ecological data. This information can be useful when informing the decision maker to acquire better information. We extend the concept of the value of information to a multiple crite…

Landowner preferences and conservation prioritization: response to Nielsen et al.

Solving Conflicts among Conservation, Economic, and Social Objectives in Boreal Production Forest Landscapes: Fennoscandian Perspectives

This chapter discusses challenges and possibilities involved in preserving biological diversity and the diversity of ecosystem services in the boreal zone and yet at the same time maintaining intensive timber extraction in boreal forests. Our focus is on Fennoscandian forests at the landscapes level, and we consider economic, social and ecological in the sustainability of forest management. We provide an outlook to boreal forest ecosystems and their history, and an overview of the forestry practices and policies that aim to ensure multi-functionality of Fennoscandian forests, i.e. diversity of efforts on sustaining biodiversity, timber production and other ecosystem services from forest lan…

Climate targets in European timber-producing countries conflict with goals on forest ecosystem services and biodiversity

The role of increased timber harvests in reaching climate mitigation targets for European countries will be limited if the protection of forest ecosystem services and biodiversity is to be achieved, suggests an empirical forest model driven by future scenarios to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C in 2100.The European Union (EU) set clear climate change mitigation targets to reach climate neutrality, accounting for forests and their woody biomass resources. We investigated the consequences of increased harvest demands resulting from EU climate targets. We analysed the impacts on national policy objectives for forest ecosystem services and biodiversity through empirical forest simulation and mul…

Spatial trade-offs between ecological and economical sustainability in the boreal production forest

Economically-oriented forestry aims to sustain timber harvest revenues, while ecologically-oriented management supplies suitable habitat for species using deadwood as primary habitat. As these objectives are conflicting, planning for economic and ecological sustainability involves compromise and trade-offs. We analyze the spatial trade-offs between the economic value from timber harvesting and the volume of deadwood in the boreal forest. We assess these trade-offs from three perspectives: (1) landscape characteristics, affected by conservation strategies; (2) forest management promoting either economic or ecological values; (3) uncertainty in inventory errors undermining the estimate of the…

Determining the appropriate timing of the next forest inventory: incorporating forest owner risk preferences and the uncertainty of forest data quality

Key message The timing to conduct new forest inventories should be based on the requirements of the decision maker. Importance should be placed on the objectives of the decision maker and his/her risk preferences related to those objectives. Context The appropriate use of pertinent and available information is paramount in any decision-making process. Within forestry, a new forest inventory is typically conducted prior to creating a forest management plan. The acquisition of new forest inventory data is justified by the simple statement of “good decisions require good data.” Aims By integrating potential risk preferences, we examine the specific needs to collect new forest information. Meth…

Potential of using data assimilation to support forest planning

Uncertainty in forest information typically results in economic and ecological losses as a consequence of suboptimal management decisions. Several techniques have been proposed to handle such uncertainties. However, these techniques are often complex and costly. Data assimilation (DA) has recently been advocated as a tool that may reduce the uncertainty, thereby improving the quality of forest planning results. It offers an opportunity to make use of all new sources of information in a systematic way and thus provides more accurate and up-to-date information to forest planning. In this study, we refer to literature on handling uncertainties in forest planning, as well as related literature …

Quantifying and easing conflicting goals between interest groups in natural resource planning

Management of natural resources at the regional level is a compromise between a variety of objectives and interests. At the local level, management of the forests depends upon the ownership structure, with forest owners using their forests as they see fit. A potential conflict occurs if the forest owners’ management decisions are counter to the interests of society in general or the industry that relies on the forest resource as their raw material. We explore the intensity of this conflict at the regional level in several large boreal forest production landscapes. To explore the conflict, we investigate three main interest groups: (i) economically oriented forest owners; (ii) industry grou…

Forest multifunctionality is not resilient to intensive forestry

AbstractThere is ample evidence that intensive management of ecosystems causes declines in biodiversity as well as in multiple ecosystem services, i.e., in multifunctionality. However, less is known about the permanence and reversibility of these responses. To gain insight into whether multifunctionality can be sustained under intensive management, we developed a framework building on the concept of resilience: a system’s ability to avoid displacement and to return or transform to a desired state. We applied it to test the ability of forest multifunctionality to persist during and recover from intensive management for timber production in a boreal forest. Using forest growth simulations and…

Forest bioenergy harvesting changes carbon balance and risks biodiversity in boreal forest landscapes

Climate solutions relying on forest bioenergy may be in conflict with carbon sequestration and storage by forests as well as conservation of biodiversity. We quantified effects of forest-residue harvesting for bioenergy on both forest carbon balance and biodiversity in a boreal forest landscape. Through a modeling framework, we simulated forest development in four real watersheds with three scenarios: (i) with and (ii) without forest-residue harvesting and (iii) set aside to study the conservation potential of these landscapes in the future without management. We simulated changes in the forest carbon stocks and in the quality and quantity of deadwood resources for 100 years and combined t…

Ecological and economic consequences of aggregating conservation sites and multiuse forests

Intensive forest management has fragmented forest landscapes and decreased biodiversity and crucial ecosystem services. Current conservation and management efforts have not been sufficient and more efficient landscape level planning is needed to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem services in forest landscapes. One efficient way to improve the species survival and the maintenance of multiple benefits in forest landscapes may be applying an approach where a part (e.g. third or half) of the total area is managed as multiuse landscapes within which e.g. a third of the area is be protected [third-of-third (1), or third-of-half (2)]. Aggregated networks of protected habitats are expected to safe…

The value and costs of information for conservation decisions – a comparison of inventory strategies using imperfect and perfect information

Conservation decisions should be made considering the information available. The quality of information can vary, depending on how the data is collected. High quality (expensive) information could be obtained from detailed field inventories, or lower quality (inexpensive / free) information could be obtained from remotely sensed information or previously acquired information. From a Bayesian statistics perspective, the value of collecting better information can be evaluated. The remotely sensed or previously acquired information could serve as prior information while the detailed field inventories could be the posterior information. For a simple one stand decision, the value of information …

Data from: Forest management optimization across spatial scales to reconcile economic and conservation objectives