Spared, shared and lost—routes for maintaining the Scandinavian Mountain foothill intact forest landscapes

Intact forest landscapes harbor significant biodiversity values and pools of ecosystem services essential for conservation, land use and rural development. Threatened by fragmentation and loss by transitions to industrial clear-cut forestry, those landscapes are of pivotal interest for protection that secures their intact character. With wall-to-wall land-cover data, we explored opportunities for maintaining intact forest landscapes through comprehensive spatial planning across a 2.5 million hectares boreal to sub-alpine forest region along the eastern slopes of the Scandinavian Mountain range. We analyzed forest and woodland types that are protected, need protection or potentially can be subject to continued forest management. We established that the fraction of already clear-cut forest is very small and that the forest landscape of the Scandinavian Mountain foothills contains a high proportion of protected high conservation value forests, covering almost 2 million ha, and that over 500,000 ha (27%) remains unprotected and may be subject to future protection or continued adapted forest management. We found evident north to south differences with respect to forest landscape configuration, distribution of unprotected forests and land ownership. With a focus on non-industrial private landowners, we conclude that sustainable land-use requires integrative, multi-functional approaches that rely on further protection, forest, and forest landscape restoration and a much larger share of continuous cover forestry than presently. Our results provide input into ongoing policy implementation and green infrastructure planning in the context of securing intact forest values and integrative opportunities for rural livelihood and regional development based on multiple value chains.publishedVersio

Woodpecker cavity establishment in managed forests: relative rather than absolute tree size matters

n/

Landscape perception: linking physical monitoring data to perceived landscape properties

Changes in the landscape affect not only people's well-being but also how people perceive and use the landscape. An increasing number of policies have highlighted the importance of conserving a landscape's recreational and aesthetical values. This study develops and evaluates a model that links people's perceptions of a mountain landscape to physical monitoring data. Using a questionnaire, we revealed how respondents working with the Swedish mountains characterise the Magnificent Mountain landscape (as defined by Swedish policy objectives) and translated these characteristics into data from the National Inventory of Landscapes in Sweden (NILS). We found 14 potential indicators that could be derived from the existing NILS physical monitoring data and which could be used to monitor changes in the landscape values as perceived by people. Based on the results, we suggest how to simultaneously utilise field sampling of physical data and field photos to provide temporal information about landscape perception

Puszcza Białowieska : miniprzewodnik naukowy

"Dzisiejsza roślinność Puszczy jest wynikiem procesów ekologicznych, które kształtowały ją od schyłku ostatniego zlodowacenia, kiedy ocieplenie klimatu umożliwiło rozwój ekosystemów leśnych na tym terenie. Około 12 tysięcy lat temu rozprzestrzeniły się tu lasy sosnowo-brzozowe, a następnie kolejno przybywały inne gatunki drzew, które wędrowały z cieplejszych rejonów Europy, gdzie przetrwały okres zlodowacenia. Stopniowo wzbogacały one tutejsze lasy i powodowały ich zróżnicowanie w zależności od warunków siedliskowych. Do pierwszych przybyszów, po sośnie i brzozie, należały wiąz i leszczyna, a między ok. 9300 a 3800 lat temu miał miejsce najbujniejszy rozwój wielogatunkowych, mieszanych lasów liściastych." (fragm.

Managing Diversity : The Challenges of Inter-University Cooperation in Sustainability Education

One of the main challenges in sustainability discourse is its multifaceted nature often requiring that many different disciplines must cooperate in order to achieve progress. This issue also concerns sustainability education. In the article, we highlighted the experiences from the international cooperation of university teachers and researchers with highly diverse professional backgrounds who worked together on developing educational materials for university students in sustainability-oriented courses. The study is based on qualitative, participatory evaluation research, applying two rounds of open-ended questionnaires distributed to the same respondents (n = 18). For the analysis, we used the open-coding procedure for identifying the main categories. The results show some of the opportunities and barriers that emerged in the process of this cooperation. In particular, we discuss the issues related to the high heterogeneity of the group, such as the clashes of the different perspectives on the topics covered, group dynamics issues, trust, facilitation challenges, and also opportunities that such heterogeneity offers. We highlight the importance of open reflectivity in sustainability-oriented educational projects as the key to their successful implementation. Finally, we believe that results of this participatory study are useful in designing new projects aiming at further improvement of academic education in sustainability and sustainable development

Bird guilds show different responses to tree retention levels: a meta-analysis

Since the introduction of retention forestry in the 1990s, its practice has spread in the boreal and temperate regions. Its benefits for biodiversity are well recognised, and usually presented in the form of aggregated results for each taxonomic group. However, ameliorating effects of increased levels of retention on species with different ecological requirements is still not well studied. With this meta-analysis, we aim at disentangling the response of different bird guilds, considering the level of retention applied, as well as other confounding factors, such as the forest type or harvested area. We used a systematic review protocol and collected 30 studies which compared the response of birds to a gradient of retention levels against unharvested forests and/or clearcuts. Firstly, we compared the overall response of the full bird assemblage to retention, and found no differences in abundance and species richness between retention and unharvested forest, except for the abundance of some forest specialist species. Secondly, assessing the responses of various guilds showed that each bird guild can be affected very differently, according to their life history, biome, forest type and, most importantly, retention intensity. Results allow us to infer minimum retention levels needed to preserve each bird guild, admitting that other factors can play an important role in shaping the bird assemblage, often in interaction with retention. For example, canopy and cavity nesters showed a more positive response to lower levels of retention in mixed or broadleaved forests than in conifer forests. Our results indicate that minimum retention levels ranging between 40 and 60% of original habitat are needed, in order to maintain the same bird assemblage as in the autochthonous unharvested forest, with particular regard to the forest specialists. Keywords: Forest birds, Forest management, Forest specialists, Selective harvest, Retention forestr

Det boreala skogslandskapets gröna infrastruktur

Rapporten handlar om norra Sveriges skogs- och fjällnäralandskap och beskriver hur biologisk mångfald och ekosystemtjänster i skog kan säkerställas i planering för gröninfrastruktur. Forskarna har analyserat struktur och konnektivitet i dagens skogslandskap och hur detta har förändrats sedan mitten av 1900-talet med ett omfattande kal- och trakthyggesbruk. Grön infrastruktur för att bevara och förstärka naturvärden måste ta sin utgångspunkt i de återstående och återhämtade resterna av naturnära skog, där redan formellt skyddad skog kompletteras med restaurering för att förstärka och återskapa naturvärden i brukad skog. Den fjällnära barrskogen och fjällbjörkskogen är ett unikt område med höga, samlade naturvärden. Förutsättningen för att kunna bevara den intakta karaktären är en fortsatt restriktiv och kunskapsbaserad skogspolitik ovanför den fjällnära gränsen. Forskningen har finansierats av Naturvårdsverkets miljöforskningsanslag till stöd för Naturvårdsverket och Havs- och vattenmyndighetens verksamhet