Evaluation of Growth Simulators for Forest Management in Terms of Functionality and Software Structure Using AHP

A range of computer models exist for simulating forest growth, with different model functions, spatial resolutions and regional calibration specifications. Choosing a suitable simulator is difficult due to its abundance and complexity. The aim of the project is to evaluate a simulator that could be adapted to conditions in Switzerland and used to support decision‐making processes in both forest enterprises and scientific contexts. Fourteen potentially suitable forest growth simulators were identified through a literature review, which was then narrowed down to four: BWINPro, SILVA, MOSES and PrognAus. In the second phase, these were systematically evaluated in terms of functionality and software structure using AHP, in order to identify a suitable simulator. The AHP evaluation entailed: (1) determining the decision criteria and hierarchy, (2) performing pairwise comparisons and calculating the utility values and (3) conducting a sensitivity analysis. AHP was found to provide a transparent, verifiable evaluation process for simulator selection. This enabled a critical argumentation and assessment of the simulators. In the third phase, not covered by this article, the selected simulator will be parametrised for Swiss conditions and incorporated into an overarching decision‐support system for forest planning and management

Bessere Kundenorientierung bei der Entwicklung physischer Produkte - Nutzung agiler Vorgehensweisen kombiniert mit Additiven Fertigungsverfahren

Viele Industrieunternehmen sind auf der Suche nach neuen Strategien für eine zukunftssichernde Produktentwicklung. Die Gründe dafür sind in den Herausforderungen zu suchen, die häufig in schnelle Änderungen von Kundenwünschen, der Verbreitung moderner Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien, kürzeren Technologielebenszyklen, Forderungen nach ökologischer Nachhaltigkeit wie auch in der weiteren zunehmenden Vernetzung der Wirtschaft zu suchen. Die heutige Entwicklungsumgebung in Unternehmen, mit meist starren Abteilungsstrukturen, wenig Kommunikation mit den Kunden und zwischen den Abteilungen im Unternehmen sowie der Auslieferung eines auf einem einmal erstellen Lastenheft basierenden Produkten wird den Anforderungen nicht mehr gerecht. In diesem Zusammenhang rücken agile Vorgehensweisen gepaart mit additiven Fertigungsverfahren für physische Produkte in den Fokus der Entwicklung

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

Landscape 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) all regimes allowed over a harvest intensity gradient from completely set aside landscapes to maximal economic gain. Estimates for the stands' structural and environmental characteristics were used to predict the stand level wind damage probability. We evaluated averaged wind-exposed standing timber volume and changing forest structure under management scenarios. Intensive rotation forestry reduced tree heights and wind damage risk, but also reduced landscape multifunctionality. Conversely, continuous cover forestry maintained multifunctionality but increased wind damage probability due to taller trees and higher thinning frequency. Overall, continuous cover forestry lowers the total volume of wind exposed timber at any given time compared with rotation forestry. Nevertheless, a selective application of rotation forestry contributes to high economic gains and increases landscape heterogeneity. A combination of management approaches across landscapes provides an efficient way to reduce the amount of wind-exposed timber volume while also increasing habitat for vertebrate and non-vertebrate species and satisfying high timber demands

Baromètre bio Suisse: de quoi dépend la decision d'achat d'aliments bio?

Les décisions d’achat ont une influence déterminante sur la demande d’aliments bio. Dans l’étude «Baromètre bio Suisse», les consommateurs ont été interrogés sur leur comportement d’achat au moyen d’une enquête standardisée, en novembre 2015. L’objectif de cette enquête était de déterminer les facteurs qui conditionnent la décision d’achat d’aliments bio et les aspects pertinents de la communication ciblant les consommateurs. L’étude a montré que les consommateurs suisses de produits bio sont majoritairement des femmes, des personnes d’un niveau d’études supérieur et vivant majoritairement en Suisse alémanique. Les personnes qui achètent souvent des produits bio s’estiment éco-responsables, elles veillent à consommer des aliments sains et peu de viande. Au-delà des critères spécifiquement alimentaires, leurs achats sont en grande partie motivés par l’altruisme, notamment la faible empreinte environnementale des produits bio, et par la recherche d’aliments sans résidus de pesticides. En revanche, les critères de goût et d’arôme jouent un rôle mineur comparés aux autres motivations d’achat, quel que soit le groupe de consommateurs. La communication devrait mettre en valeur non seulement le goût des aliments bio mais surtout leur caractère naturel et leur compatibilité environnementale. L’enquête «Baromètre bio Suisse» sera effectuée à intervalles réguliers afin de pouvoir détecter les changements de tendances en matière de consommation

Biobarometer Schweiz: Wovon die Kaufentscheidung für Biolebensmittel abhängt

Kaufentscheidungen beeinflussen massgeblich die Nachfrage nach Biolebensmitteln. In der Studie «Biobarometer Schweiz» wurden Konsumentinnen und Konsumenten im November 2015 mit einer standardisierten Befragung zu ihrem Kaufverhalten befragt. Ziel der Befragung war es zu untersuchen, von welchen Faktoren die Kaufentscheidung für Biolebensmittel abhängt, und zu ermitteln, welche Aspekte in der Kommunikation gegenüber den Konsumentinnen und Konsumenten relevant sind. Die Studie hat gezeigt, dass die Schweizer Biokonsumierenden signifikant häufiger weiblich sind, ein höheres Bildungsniveau haben und mehrheitlich in der Deutschschweiz leben. Die Konsumenten, die häufig Bioprodukte kaufen, bezeichnen sich als umweltbewusst, achten auf eine gesunde Ernährung und auf einen geringen Fleischkonsum. Neben ernährungsspezifischen Motiven haben für sie vor allem altruistische Kaufmotive einen hohen Stellenwert, zudem die Naturbelassenheit der Bioprodukte sowie die Vermeidung von Pestizidrückständen in Lebensmitteln. Dagegen nimmt die Bedeutung von Geschmack und Aroma beim Lebensmitteleinkauf im Vergleich zu den anderen Kaufmotiven innerhalb der jeweiligen Käufergruppe mit abnehmendem Biokonsum zu. Neben dem Genussaspekt von Biolebensmitteln sollten vor allem Aspekte wie Natürlichkeit und Umweltverträglichkeit im Vordergrund der Kommunikation stehen. Das Biobarometer Schweiz wird zukünftig in regelmässigen Abständen durchgeführt, sodass sich Veränderungen von Konsumtrends ableiten lassen

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. Finally, we used multi-objective optimization to identify the combination of management regimes matching best with each policy scenario and analysed their long-term effects on FES.The NFS scenario proved to be the most multifunctional, targeting the highest number of FES, while the BES had the lowest FES targets. However, the NFS was strongly oriented towards the value chain of wood and bioenergy and had a dominating economic growth target, which caused strong within-policy conflicts and hindered reaching biodiversity targets. The BDS and BES scenarios were instead more consistent but showed either sustainability gaps in terms of providing timber resources (BDS) or no improvements in forest biodiversity (BES). All policy scenarios resulted in forest management programs dominated by continuous cover forestry, set-aside areas, and intensive management zones, with proportions depending on the policy focus. Our results highlight for the first time the conflicts among national sectoral policies in terms of management requirements and effects on forest multifunctionality. The outcomes provide leverage points for policymakers to increase coherence among future policies and improve implementation of multiple uses of forests

Enhancing multifunctionality in European boreal forests: The potential role of Triad landscape functional zoning

Land-use policies aim at enhancing the sustainable use of natural resources. The Triad approach has been suggested to balance the social, ecological, and economic demands of forested landscapes. The core idea is to enhance multifunctionality at the landscape level by allocating landscape zones with specific management priorities, i.e., production (intensive management), multiple use (extensive management), and conservation (forest reserves). We tested the efficiency of the Triad approach and identified the respective proportion of above-mentioned zones needed to enhance multifunctionality in Finnish forest landscapes. Through a simulation and optimization framework, we explored a range of scenarios of the three zones and evaluated how changing their relative proportion (each ranging from 0 to 100%) impacted landscape multifunctionality, measured by various biodiversity and ecosystem service indicators. The results show that maximizing multifunctionality required around 20% forest area managed intensively, 50% extensively, and 30% allocated to forest reserves. In our case studies, such landscape zoning represented a good compromise between the studied multifunctionality components and maintained 61% of the maximum achievable net present value (i.e., total timber economic value). Allocating specific proportion of the landscape to a management zone had distinctive effects on the optimized economic or multifunctionality values. Net present value was only moderately impacted by shifting from intensive to extensive management, while multifunctionality benefited from less intensive and more diverse management regimes. This is the first study to apply Triad in a European boreal forest landscape, highlighting the usefulness of this approach. Our results show the potential of the Triad approach in promoting forest multifunctionality, as well as a strong trade-off between net present value and multifunctionality. We conclude that simply applying the Triad approach does not implicitly contribute to an overall increase in forest multifunctionality, as careful forest management planning still requires clear landscape objectives

Diversification of forest management can mitigate wind damage risk and maintain biodiversity

Mitigating future forest risks, safeguarding timber revenues and improving biodiversity are key considerations for current boreal forest management. Alternatives to rotation forestry likely have an important role, but how they will perform under a changing climate remains unclear. We used a boreal forest growth simulator to explore how variations on traditional clear-cutting, in rotation length, thinning intensity, and increasing number of remaining trees after final harvest (green tree retention), and on extent of continuous cover forestry will affect stand-level probability of wind damage, timber production, deadwood volume, and habitats for forest species. We used business-as-usual rotation forestry as a baseline and compared alternative management adaptations under the reference and two climate change scenarios. Climate change increased overall timber production and had lower impacts on biodiversity compared to management adaptations. Shortening the rotation length reduced the probability of wind damage compared to business-as-usual, but also decreased both deadwood volume and suitable habitats for our focal species. Continuous cover forestry, and management with refraining from thinnings, and extension of rotation length represent complementary approaches benefiting biodiversity, with respective effects of improving timber revenues, reducing wind damage risk, and benefiting old-growth forest structures. However, extensive application of rotation length shortening to mitigate wind damage risk may be detrimental for forest biodiversity. To safeguard forest biodiversity over the landscape, shortening of the rotation length could be complemented with widespread application of regimes promoting old-growth forest structures

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

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 translate the theoretical knowledge into practice and how to operationalize boreal forest management to maintain forest ecosystem services and functions under changing global conditions. We identify and summarize the main management approaches (natural disturbance emulation, landscape functional zoning, functional complex network, and climate-smart forestry) that can promote forest resilience. Summary We review the concept of resilience in forest sciences, how extreme events may put boreal forests at risk, and how management can alleviate or promote such risks. We found that the combined effects of increased temperatures and extreme events are having negative impacts on forests. Then, we discuss how the main management approaches could enhance forest resilience and multifunctionality (simultaneous provision of high levels of multiple ecosystem services and species habitats). Finally, we identify the complementary strengths of individual approaches and report challenges on how to implement them in practice

Dosimetry during intramedullary nailing of the tibia: Patient and occupational exposure

Background Intramedullary nailing under fluoroscopic guidance is a common operation. We studied the intraoperative radiation dose received by both the patient and the personnel