159 research outputs found
Multiple criteria decision analysis with consideration to place-specific values in participatory forest planning
The combination of multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and participatory planning is an approach that has been applied in complex planning situations where multiple criteria of very different natures are considered, and several stakeholders or social groups are involved. The spatial character of forest planning problems adds further to the complexity, because a large number of forest stands are to be assigned different treatments at different points in time. In addition, experience from participatory forest planning indicates that stakeholders may think about the forest in terms of place-specific values rather than in forest-wide terms. The objective of this study was to present an approach for including place-specific values in MCDA-based participatory forest planning and illustrate the approach by a case study where the objective was to choose a multipurpose forest plan for an area of urban forest in northern Sweden. Stakeholder values were identified in interviews, and maps were used to capture place-specific spatial values. The nonspatial and nonplace-specific spatial values were formulated as criteria and used to build an objective hierarchy describing the decision situation. The place-specific spatial values were included in the creation of a map showing zones of different silvicultural management classes, which was used as the basis for creation of forest plan alternatives in the subsequent process. The approach seemed to work well for capturing place-specific values, and the study indicates that formalized methods for including and evaluating place-specific values in participatory forest planning processes should be developed and tested further
Participatory forest planning and multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA)
With the industrial revolution, the human utilization of the forest took a new turn as
wood became a commercial product (Ăstlund & Zackrisson 2000). Since then,
economical considerations have pervaded the public perspective on forest and
forestry. However, the awareness of the need for sustainability in the use of the forest
resource has also grown, and during the last decades other values have entered the
discussion and the practice of forestry. Today, sustainable forest management (SFM)
where economical, ecological and social values are all satisfied, is a core element in
the development of acceptable forest management practices.
Public participation is strongly related to SFM. In some industrialized countries, e.g.
Canada, demands for participation in natural resource management have subsequently
been incorporated into the legislation (Chambers and Beckley 2003), but in most
countries there is no legal demand for participation. In Sweden for example, the only
demand for participation in the Forestry Act is consultation before clear cutting in
certain areas of reindeer herding. Forest certification, which is now covering
extensive areas in several countries, plays an interesting role in the promotion of
SFM. However, its main purpose is not public participation and the integration of
social values into forestry (Angelstam et al. 2004). Internationally, there is the Aarhus
Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision Making and
Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. This convention has been ratified by
Sweden amongst other countries, but it is difficult to make a strict interpretation of it.
New approaches and methods are obviously needed in forest management planning to
incorporate forest values other than timber production and to help solve conflicts of
interest. There have been some attempts made by different types of projects. The
Canadian Model Forest concept promotes participation in the work for SFM, and has
been tried out in Sweden in the Vilhelmina Model Forest project (Svensson et al.
2004). Some of the LIFE projects sponsored by the European Union are also
applications of participation with SFM as the objective; the project âLocal
Participation in Sustainable Forest Management based on Landscape Analysisâ is a
Swedish example of a LIFE project sponsored by the European Union
(http://www.svo.se/minskog/templates/svo_se_vanlig.asp?id=8001, 2007-01-12).
A potentially powerful tool in the work for sustainable forest management
(SFM) and participation is multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA), an
approach which can make it possible to handle complex decision situations
involving conflicting interests and several stakeholders.
The purpose of this paper is to clarify concepts related to participation and
present methods that are applicable in participatory planning. More specifically
the following questions will be dealt with:
âą What is meant by participation? What methods and techniques are
available to participatory planning processes?
âą What is MCDA and what phases do this approach require?
In order to illuminate the state of art of participatory planning in forestry, an
analysis of a number of case studies is presented
A framework for defining weights of decision makers in group decision-making, using consistency between different multicriteria weighting methods
Most forest operations are complex problems that require the weights of relevant criteria - representing trade-offs between various economic, ecological, and social aspects of the problem - to be defined. Usually this is done by using multicriteria weighting method(s) in a group (participatory) context in order to include different opinions and to minimize risk of poor individual judgments. Furthermore, in group decision-making, the weights of decision makers (DMs) must be defined. However, no consensus exists on the best way to determine related weights assigned to DMs. For that purpose, we propose the consistency-based group decision-making framework (CGDF), which uses the expertise of a DM to weight the responses of the DM when deriving an overall group decision. The novel part of CGDF is the inter-weights consistency method (ICM) for evaluating the expertise of a DM based on the consistency of the weights the DM assigns to different criteria using different multicriteria weighting methods. We demonstrate the utility of ICM and CGDF by applying them to a decision-making problem from Swedish forest operations - defining weights of criteria relevant for designing the machine-trail network for driving in the forest terrain
Availability and mobilization of forest resources in Sweden
The available amount of wood supply is essential for national strategic planning and evaluation of forestry in Sweden. Since Sweden holds a large part of the forests in the European Union and plays a significant role in the global trade of wood-based products, a precise estimate of the potential of the Swedish forest resource is also important in regional and global outlook studies. In this study, we analyse factors influencing the availability and mobilization of wood supply. By comparing data from the Swedish National Forest Inventory with the stand registers of the five largest forest owners in Sweden, we estimate the productive forest area not included in the forest owners' stand databases. Our results show that 0.4 million hectares, or 5% of these large-scale forest owners productive forest area, is outside their stand registers and therefore neither included in their long-term harvesting plans nor in their nature conservation plans. For small-scale forest owners, we analyse the final felling rate during 2004-2020 using satellite imagery to estimate the proportion of properties that abstain from final fellings and thereby could affect the potential mobilization of wood supply. During this period, 32% of the forest properties owned by small-scale forest owners have not done any final felling. These forest estates hold in total 1.1 million hectares of productive forest land or 9% of the area owned by small-scale forest owners. This implies a gap between the potential and realistic estimates for Forest Available for Wood Supply
Role of innate signalling pathways in the immunogenicity of alphaviral replicon-based vaccines
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Alphaviral replicon-based vectors induce potent immune responses both when given as viral particles (VREP) or as DNA (DREP). It has been suggested that the strong immune stimulatory effect induced by these types of vectors is mediated by induction of danger signals and activation of innate signalling pathways due to the replicase activity. To investigate the innate signalling pathways involved, mice deficient in either toll-like receptors or downstream innate signalling molecules were immunized with DREP or VREP.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We show that the induction of a CD8<sup>+ </sup>T cell response did not require functional TLR3 or MyD88 signalling. However, IRF3, converging several innate signalling pathways and important for generation of pro-inflammatory cytokines and type I IFNs, was needed for obtaining a robust primary immune response. Interestingly, type I interferon (IFN), induced by most innate signalling pathways, had a suppressing effect on both the primary and memory T cell responses after DREP and VREP immunization.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We show that alphaviral replicon-based vectors activate multiple innate signalling pathways, which both activate and restrict the induced immune response. These results further show that there is a delicate balance in the strength of innate signalling and induction of adaptive immune responses that should be taken into consideration when innate signalling molecules, such as type I IFNs, are used as vaccine adjuvant.</p
Decision support systems in forest management: requirements from a participatory planning perspective
Participatory approaches and computerised tools such as decision support systems (DSS) represent conflicting tendencies in state-of the-art sustainable forest management. As a result, there may be considerable tension between these two developments in practice. The objective of this paper is to explore how participatory approaches and DSS could be brought together to improve planning processes and to explore how DSS could be adapted in their use or combined with other tools to enable successful participatory planning. From a review of the literature, we identified criteria related to successful participatory planning. From these criteria, we selected those a DSS can influence and created a short list of the criteria that could be used to evaluate participatory processes where DSS are applied. The evaluation criteria with particular relevance for DSS that we identified are as follows: fairness, opportunity to influence outcome, quality and selection of information, cost-effectiveness, challenging status quo and fostering creative thinking, structured decision-making process, transparency, and independence and neutrality of process. We also scrutinised existing forest DSS and identified features that may enable DSS to address these criteria. The features of DSS we identified that may support participatory processes are as follows: group decision support, possibilities to include other values than timber production, flexibility of system to include non-traditional forest data and management options, and multi-criteria decision analysis tools. We argue that the DSS to be used should be assessed to clarify, how it can be used in the specific planning situation and how it should be complemented with other available and non-computerised tool
Participatory forest planning and Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA)
With the industrial revolution, the human utilization of the forest took a new turn as
wood became a commercial product (Ăstlund & Zackrisson 2000). Since then,
economical considerations have pervaded the public perspective on forest and
forestry. However, the awareness of the need for sustainability in the use of the forest
resource has also grown, and during the last decades other values have entered the
discussion and the practice of forestry. Today, sustainable forest management (SFM)
where economical, ecological and social values are all satisfied, is a core element in
the development of acceptable forest management practices.
Public participation is strongly related to SFM. In some industrialized countries, e.g.
Canada, demands for participation in natural resource management have subsequently
been incorporated into the legislation (Chambers and Beckley 2003), but in most
countries there is no legal demand for participation. In Sweden for example, the only
demand for participation in the Forestry Act is consultation before clear cutting in
certain areas of reindeer herding. Forest certification, which is now covering
extensive areas in several countries, plays an interesting role in the promotion of
SFM. However, its main purpose is not public participation and the integration of
social values into forestry (Angelstam et al. 2004). Internationally, there is the Aarhus
Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision Making and
Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. This convention has been ratified by
Sweden amongst other countries, but it is difficult to make a strict interpretation of it.
New approaches and methods are obviously needed in forest management planning to
incorporate forest values other than timber production and to help solve conflicts of
interest. There have been some attempts made by different types of projects. The
Canadian Model Forest concept promotes participation in the work for SFM, and has
been tried out in Sweden in the Vilhelmina Model Forest project (Svensson et al.
2004). Some of the LIFE projects sponsored by the European Union are also
applications of participation with SFM as the objective; the project âLocal
Participation in Sustainable Forest Management based on Landscape Analysisâ is a
Swedish example of a LIFE project sponsored by the European Union
(http://www.svo.se/minskog/templates/svo_se_vanlig.asp?id=8001, 2007-01-12).
A potentially powerful tool in the work for sustainable forest management
(SFM) and participation is multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA), an
approach which can make it possible to handle complex decision situations
involving conflicting interests and several stakeholders.
The purpose of this paper is to clarify concepts related to participation and
present methods that are applicable in participatory planning. More specifically
the following questions will be dealt with:
âą What is meant by participation? What methods and techniques are
available to participatory planning processes?
âą What is MCDA and what phases do this approach require?
In order to illuminate the state of art of participatory planning in forestry, an
analysis of a number of case studies is presented
Analysis of decision-making processes for strategic technology investments in Swedish large-scale forestry
Technological development gives forest companies opportunities to maintain competitiveness in the highly cost-sensitive market for forest products. However, no previous studies have examined the technological development decisions made by forest companies or the support tools used when making them. We therefore aimed to describe and analyze 1) the processes used when making such decisions, 2) the associated decision situations, and 3) the use of and need for decision sup-port tools in these processes, with a harwarder concept as case. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with respondents from six forestry organizations. Two theoretical frameworks were used to analyze the interviews, one for unstructured decision processes and one for decision situations. The respondents' descriptions of their decision processes were consistent with those observed in other industries, and it was shown that decision-making could potentially be improved by invest-ing more resources into diagnosing the problem at hand. The main objective in decision-making was to maximize economic criteria while satisfying threshold requirements relating to criteria such as operator well-being, soil rutting, and wood value. When facing large uncertainties, inter-viewees preferred to gather data through operational trials and/or scientific studies. If confronted with large uncertainties that could not be reduced, they proceeded with development only if the potential gains exceeded the estimated uncertainties, and implemented innovations in a stepwise manner. These results indicate a need for greater use of existing decision-support tools such as problem-structuring methods to enable more precise diagnoses, simulations to better understand new innovations, and optimization to better evaluate their theoretical large-scale potential
MaÌngbruk av skog â om att utveckla skogens mervaÌrden
MÄngbruk av skog Àr ingen ny företeelse i Sverige. Skogen har alltid pÄ olika sÀtt haft betydelse för mÀnniskors försörjning. Dagens definition av mÄngbruk Àr att skogen anvÀnds för flera olika syften (t.ex. skogsbruk, naturturism, rennÀring, naturvÄrd m.m.) som kan vara kommersiella eller icke-kommersiella. Inom ramen för det nationella skogsprogrammet har frÄgan om mÄngbrukets outnyttjade potential aktualiserats. Beroende pÄ vem eller vilka man frÄgar, och vilken erfarenhet de har av mÄngbruk, finns det emellertid olika uppfattningar om mÄngbrukets potential att skapa fler jobb och hÄllbar tillvÀxt i hela landet.
I den hÀr rapporten syntetiserar vi kunskap om mÄngbruk av skog baserat pÄ tidigare och nu genomförda studier och kartlÀgger och analyserar förutsÀttningarna för att bedriva mÄngbruk av skog. UtifrÄn studiens frÄgestÀllningar har vi kommit fram till följande slutsatser:
⹠Naturturism Àr en primÀr form av mÄngbruk med utvecklingspotential för jobbskapande pÄ landsbygden.
âą Ăven vidareförĂ€dling av olika rĂ„varor och Ă€ventyrsbaserade aktiviteter har potential att utvecklas inom ramen för mĂ„ngbruk.
⹠En vÀl fungerande samhÀllsinfrastruktur Àr en viktig förutsÀttning för alla former av mÄngbruk som bygger pÄ att verksamheten ska attrahera besökare.
⹠Icke-kommersiella former mÄngbruk Àr en sjÀlvklarhet för mÄnga skogsÀgare. Man anger sjÀlvhushÄllning (av frÀmst viltkött, bÀr och svamp) samt rekreationsbefrÀmjande ÄtgÀrder (som t. ex. att ordna en grillplats för lokalbefolkningen).
⹠MÄnga skogsÀgare har inte intresse av att utveckla mÄngbruk pÄ sin mark, men stÀller sig ofta positiva till att andra gör det.
⹠AllemansrÀtten Àr en central förutsÀttning för mÄngbruk, men det Àr viktigt att upprÀtta formella avtal vid kommersiell verksamhet pÄ annans mark.
⹠MÄngbruk kan ofta bedrivas i skogen oavsett hur den sköts, Àven om det finns exempel dÀr sÀrskilt trakthyggesbruk kan upplevas som störande.
⹠Det finns potential att utveckla mÄngbruk i anslutning till skyddade omrÄden - pÄ sÄ sÀtt skulle mÄngbruk kunna fungera som en brygga mellan att bruka och bevara skogslandskapet.
⹠Genom att skapa dialogplattformar som möjliggör för olika aktörer att fÄ en holistisk bild av skogslandskapet och dess nyttjande kan olika mÄngbruksverksamheter bÀttre utvecklas bÄde parallellt och integrerat.
⹠MÄngbrukets utmaningar liknar andra smÄföretagares utmaningar vad gÀller efterlevnaden av komplicerade regelverk som Àr anpassade till mer storskaliga företag vad gÀller till exempel livsmedelshantering.
⹠DÀrutöver innebÀr mÄngbrukets lokalisering till glesbygd att det finns utmaningar med att bedriva sÀsongsbunden verksamhet och svÄrigheter med att finna arbetskraft.
Dagens skogspolitik frÀmjar i princip mÄngbruk, men i studierna som denna rapport bygger pÄ framkommer att mÄngbruksfrÄgan Àr sektorsövergripande och att insatser inom exempelvis nÀrings- och landsbygdspolitiken ocksÄ behövs för att nÄ mÄngbrukets fulla potential.
Följande slutsatser frĂ„n rapporten utgör förslag till hur genomförandet av det nationella skogsprogrammets vision och mĂ„let âMĂ„ngbruk av skog för fler jobb och hĂ„llbar tillvĂ€xt i hela landetâ kan realiseras, och hur mĂ„len âĂkad sysselsĂ€ttningâ, âStĂ€rkt hĂ„llbar tillvĂ€xtâ och âLandsbygdsutveckling med beaktande av skogens sociala vĂ€rdenâ kan uppnĂ„s:
⹠Utveckla politik och styrning för mÄngbruk inom ramen för hÄllbar landsbygdsutveckling.
⹠StÀrk landsbygdens infrastruktur för att möjliggöra mÄngbruk av skog.
⹠Etablera arenor för samverkan och erfarenhetsutbyte rörande mÄngbruk.
⹠Sprid kunskap om mÄngbruk och satsa pÄ entreprenörskap.
⹠Utveckla former för avtal mellan mÄngFoto: Maria Groth/Mostphotos bruksentreprenörer, markÀgare och andra rÀttighetsinnehavare.
⹠Se över om skyddade omrÄden kan öppnas upp för mÄngbruk.
⹠Förenkla regelverk för landsbygdsföretagande.
⹠Se över möjligheterna till riktade ekonomiska stöd till mÄngbrukare pÄ landsbygden
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