Trade-Offs in Ecosystem Services: Clarifying Concepts and Measuring Severity within the Production Possibility Frontier Framework

Production possibility frontier (PPF) in economics denotes the set of all efficient combinations of the amounts of two or more goods that can be produced from the given resources and within the given technology. In the ecosystem services context, it corresponds to all efficient combinations of the amounts of two or more ecosystem services that can be obtained from the given land area within the given management framework. PPF thus captures the conflict, or trade-off, between the production of different goods or services. However, there is a lack of an agreed understanding of what precisely in a PPF expresses the degree of that conflict. This lack of clarity may greatly confound the discussions on trade-offs. This paper tries to answer the two following questions: (1) what exactly is trade-off in the PPF context? (2) how to effectively measure and compare trade-offs across PPFs? In response to the second question, a quantitative generic measure of trade-off severity is proposed

Introduction of GIS into IKEA's wood sourcing system

Being a large home products retailer IKEA uses around six and a half million cubic meters of wood annually in its products. IKEA has a wide range of suppliers in many countries all around the world. In 2007 IKEA launched a project introducing GIS into the company’s wood sourcing system. The present study was conducted during the summer and autumn of 2007 in collaboration with IKEA. Its aim was to investigate issues that had arisen in the course of the GIS project in the company, such as region of origin in wood tracing, availability of forest resource data on sub-country regional level. In addition, this study is to provide an insight into the systems future usage by building a sample database and testing essential functionality of the system by the means of ArcView 9.2 GIS software. A few examples of GIS in wood origin tracing and decision support systems in other companies were reviewed. Information on territorial divisions in place was collected for twelve countries selected for the study in order to investigate the wood origin region definition issue. The selected countries were: Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. In the next step, availability of forest resource data at the defined sub-country regional level was assessed for the same set of countries. Finally a sample database was built including IKEA’s forest tracing system data, acquired forest resource data for a sub-set of countries and spatial data for displaying features of countries, regions and sub-regions on the map. With the sample database and the GIS software programme, ArcView 9.2, practical execution of a few principal tasks was tested. Results revealed a pattern of multi-purpose territorial units in the countries covered by the study and possible approaches to the wood origin region definition issue. Furthermore, the results showed a limited availability of forest resource data on a sub-country regional level in the investigated countries. However, it is important to point out that the study presents just a “snap-shot” picture as of 2007. The final part allowed for identifying basic relationships in the database which were necessary for the software to execute principal data query and analysis tasks as well as allowing for obtaining a picture of the visualization capabilities of the system. A few recommendations were given concerning wood origin region definition and the outlook of including forest resource data in the GIS system in IKEA’s wood sourcing

An area-based matrix model for uneven-aged forests

In this paper a new concept for modeling uneven-aged forests (UEAF) is presented. The term UEAF in this article encloses all forests that deviate from the even-aged structure. The matrix model is area-based, in that the forest under study is described by a distribution of areas over fixed state-spaces spanned by stem number and volume per hectare classes. Dynamics is introduced as transitions of areas inside the state-space during the simulation. Harvesting activities and the occurrence of calamities are explicitly handled. The model is designed to be suitable for large-scale analyses. The concept was tested in an application to Austrian National Forest Inventory (NFI) data. Results shown, including a comparison to older inventory data, indicate that it is worth further elaborating on the concept and the model. The work will be continued and in the next step the model concept will be applied in several other countries.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

Abandoning conversion from even-aged to uneven-aged forest stands - the effects on production and economic returns

There is growing interest in continuous cover forestry in Sweden. The historical domination of even-aged forest management means there is a need to focus on methods for transforming even-aged to uneven-aged stands. Practical conversion management today is highly adaptive, and the possibility of failures, such as persistent lack of tree recruitment, must be allowed for. We used simulations to evaluate various scenarios in which conversion management is introduced at different development stages in even-aged stands and then abandoned in favour of clear-felling. A shift towards an inverse J-shaped diameter distribution at the end of the simulations was most evident in northern Sweden and with an early introduction of conversion forestry. The largest losses were incurred in a scenario where the conversion management started with removing larger trees at pre-commercial thinning: it reduced the volume of production by up to 25% and, if clear-felled, resulted in a lower land expectation value than conventional management. Earlier decision to abandon conversion management reduced the losses, but the effect of timing was minor. In summary, the results indicate that conversion management could be started and abandoned without any major economic loss during the timeframe of a normal rotation

The effect of spatial and temporal planning scale on the trade-off between the financial value and carbon storage in production forests

Background: Increasing carbon stock in standing forests is one of the proposed ways to mitigate climate change. However, in production forests, this typically would lead to reduced harvesting possibilities and thus reduced financial gain for the forest owners. The size of this reduction should depend on the chosen target level of the carbon stock as well as the required speed of accumulation. Furthermore, due to landscape heterogeneity, the size of the loss can be expected to vary the planning scale, often related to forest property size.Aim: This study aimed to quantify the effects of spatial and temporal planning scales on the severity of the tradeoff between Net Present Value (NPV) of future timber sales and carbon storage in production forests in Southern Sweden.Methods: We used the Heureka PlanWise forest decision support system with built-in Linear Programming functionality. We created six Production Possibility Frontiers (PPF) that quantified the trade-off for the combinations of two scenarios for timing of carbon accumulation (either by 2100 or by 2100 with an intermediate target by 2045) and three spatial management scales (-3300 ha, -300 ha, and -60 ha; 1068 stands).Results: There was a strong effect of temporal scale, with consistently lower NPV, with the same carbon stock in 2100, when the intermediate target for 2045 was applied. The effect of the spatial scale was only apparent between the smallest (50 ha) scale and the larger scales (300 and 3300 ha), with consistently lower NPV with the same carbon stock at the smallest scale.Conclusion: We conclude that both the effects of spatial management scale and temporal scale on the cost of carbon storage should be considered in relation to potential climate policies

Precision thinning - a comparison of optimal stand-level and pixel-level thinning

Precision forestry allows decision-making on tree level or pixel level, as compared to stand-level data. However, little is known about the importance of precision in thinning decisions and its long-term effects on within-stand variation, stand economy and growth. In this study, silviculture was optimized for Net Present Value (NPV) in 20 conifer-dominated forest stands in hemi-boreal southern Sweden. The precision-thinning approach, Precision Thinning (PT), is compared with a stand-level approach, Stand Level Thinning (SLT) that is optimized for the same criteria but based on stand-level data. The results suggest no substantial long-term benefit or drawback in implementing thinning decisions based on pixel-level data as compared to stand-level data when optimizing stand economy. The result variables NPV and Mean annual increment of living stem volume (MAI(net)) were not higher for PT than for SLT. The within-stand variation in basal area (m(2)/ha(-1)) was lower at the end of the rotation compared to the start of the simulation for both SLT and PT. At the end of the rotation, SLT had higher variation in basal area compared to PT. However, pixel-level information enables adapting the silviculture to the within-stand variation which may favour other forest management goals than strictly financial goals

Modelling effects of regeneration method on the growth and profitability of Scots pine stands

Despite numerous studies there are still uncertainties regarding regeneration strategies that are optimal for productivity and profitability. Thus the aim of this study was to establish effects of three regeneration methods (planting, direct seeding and natural regeneration) on the production and profitability of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) stands in southern Sweden. Long-term stand development was simulated, with the StandWise application of the Heureka decision support system, starting from short-term regeneration outcomes observed in several field experiments at sites with relatively high productivity (H100 site indices, i.e. heights of dominant pines at 100 years: 27-30 m). Financial and production results of each approach were assessed in terms of Land Expectation Value (LEV) and Mean Annual Increment (MAI), respectively, across a whole rotation. Planting on clear-cuts with 1600-3265 seedlings per hectare resulted in the highest profitability and production, whereas high-density planting (10,000 seedlings per hectare) resulted in negative LEV. However, sensitivity analysis showed that the results depended on the interest rate. Retention of seed-trees incurred additional costs relative to single-operation clear felling. In contrast, retention of shelter-trees had good financial results (at 0% and 2.5% interest rate), although they depended on the site index and average tree size

From mixtures to monocultures: Bird assemblage responses along a production forest conifer-broadleaf gradient

Increasing the prevalence of broadleaf trees in conifer-dominated production forests is a recommended means of improving habitat availability for broadleaf and mixed-forest species. The implications for biodiversity are often measured by contrasting broadleaf-conifer mixtures with conifer-dominated stands. However, few studies include broadleaf-dominated stands in these assessments. Here we contrasted the bird assemblages of even-aged production forests along a mixture gradient from Norway spruce (Picea abies) dominated, to birch (Betula spp.) dominated stands in southern Sweden. We conducted point count surveys of bird individuals exhibiting breeding behaviour within 30 stands varying from <0.5% to over 98.5% broadleaf by basal area. A total of 355 birds were detected, comprising 36 bird species, seven of which are classified as near threatened by the Swedish Red-list. Our results indicate i) a distinct shift in bird community composition linked to the percentage of broadleaf trees at stand and landscape scales, ii) significantly higher bird species richness, evenness, and abundance in stands with a higher proportion of birch, iii) higher bird abundance in birch-dominated stands than in mixtures, and iv) shifts in bird species guilds as related to stand basal area, the amount of shrubs in the understory, and quantities of dead wood. All of these results have implications for the ways in which production forest management could be altered to enhance avian diversity, and we discuss these with respect to the use of broadleaf versus mixed-species stands

Carrying out a multi-model integrated assessment of European energy transition pathways: Challenges and benefits

With the publication of the European Green Deal, the European Union has committed to reaching carbon neutrality by 2050. The envisaged reductions of direct greenhouse gases emissions are seen as technically feasible, but if a wrong path is pursued, significant unintended impacts across borders, sectors, societies and ecosystems may follow. Without the insights gained from an impact assessment framework reaching beyond the techno-economic perspective, the pursuit of direct emission reductions may lead to counterproductive outcomes in the long run. We discuss the opportunities and challenges related to the creation and use of an integrated assessment framework built to inform the European Commission on the path to decarbonisation. The framework is peculiar in that it goes beyond existing ones in its scope, depth and cross-scale coverage, by use of numerous specialised models and case studies. We find challenges of consistency that can be overcome by linking modelling tools iteratively in some cases, harmonising modelling assumptions in others, comparing model outputs in others. We find the highest added value of the framework in additional insights it provides on the technical feasibility of decarbonisation pathways, on vulnerability aspects and on unintended environmental and health impacts on national and sub-national scale.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Decision support tools and strategies to simulate forest landscape evolutions integrating forest owner behaviour: a review from the case studies of the European Project, INTEGRAL

For forest sustainability and vulnerability assessment, the landscape scale is considered to be more and more relevant as the stand level approaches its known limitations. This review, which describes the main forest landscape simulation tools used in the 20 European case studies of the European project “Future-oriented integrated management of European forest landscapes” (INTEGRAL), gives an update on existing decision support tools to run landscape simulation from Mediterranean to boreal ecosystems. The main growth models and software available in Europe are described, and the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches are discussed. Trades-offs between input efforts and output are illustrated. Recommendations for the selection of a forest landscape simulator are given. The paper concludes by describing the need to have tools that are able to cope with climate change and the need to build more robust indicators for assessment of forest landscape sustainability and vulnerability.The INTEGRAL project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement No. 282887. http://www. integral-project.eu/. Moreover, financial support by the Transnational Access to Research Infrastructures activity in the 7th Framework Programme of the EC under the Trees4Future project (No. 284181) for conducting the research is gratefully acknowledged. This research has also received funding from the European Union H2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 691149 (SuFoRun). Researcher Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo was supported by a “Ramon y Cajal” research contract from the MINECO (Ref. RYC-2013-14262) and has received funding from CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya. This paper could be achieved thanks to support of EFIATLANTIC donors: Conseil regional d’Aquitaine, Ministère de l’agriculture et de la forêt