An integrated MCDA software application for forest planning : a case study in southwestern Sweden

Forest planning in Sweden today translates not only into planning of timber production, but also for the provision of other functions and services. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods provide a way to take also non-monetary values into account in planning. The purpose of this study was to gain experience on how to use a forest decision support system combined with an MCDA tool in practical forestry. We used a new forest planning tool, PlanWise, which includes an integrated MCDA module, PlanEval. Using the software, the decision maker can compare different forest plans and evaluate them against his/her objectives in a structured and analytical manner. The analysis thus provides a ranking of the alternatives based on the individual preferences of the decision maker. PlanEval and the MCDA planning process are described in a case study, where the manager of a forest estate in southwestern Sweden used the program to compare different forest plans made for the estate. In the paper, we analyze possibilities and challenges of this approach and identify problems such as the adherence to formal requirements of MCDA techniques and the difficulty of comparing maps. Possibilities to expedite an MCDA planning process further are also discussed. The findings confirm that integration of an MCDA tool with a forest decision support system is valuable, but requires expert assistance to be successful

Combining Climate Change Mitigation Scenarios with Current Forest Owner Behavior: A Scenario Study from a Region in Southern Sweden

This study investigates the need for change of current forest management approaches in a southern Swedish region within the context of future climate change mitigation through empirically derived projections, rather than forest management according to silvicultural guidelines. Scenarios indicate that climate change mitigation will increase global wood demand. This might call for adjustments of well-established management approaches. This study investigates to what extent increasing wood demands in three climate change mitigation scenarios can be satisfied with current forest management approaches of different intensities in a southern Swedish region. Forest management practices in Kronoberg County were mapped through interviews, statistics, and desk research and were translated into five different management strategies with different intensities regulating management at the property level. The consequences of current practices, as well as their intensification, were analyzed with the Heureka Planwise forest planning system in combination with a specially developed forest owner decision simulator. Projections were done over a 100-year period under three climate change mitigation scenarios developed with the Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIUM). Current management practices could meet scenario demands during the first 20 years. This was followed by a shortage of wood during two periods in all scenarios unless rotations were reduced. In a longer timeframe, the wood demands were projected to be easily satisfied in the less ambitious climate change mitigation scenarios. In contrast, the demand in the ambitious mitigation scenario could not be met with current management practices, not even if all owners managed their production forests at the intensive extreme of current management approaches. The climate change mitigation scenarios provide very different trajectories with respect to future drivers of forest management. Our results indicate that with less ambitious mitigation efforts, the relatively intensive practices in the study region can be softened while ambitious mitigation might push for further intensification

Forest reference levels under Regulation (EU) 2018/841 for the period 2021-2025: Overview and main findings of the technical assessment

Regulation (EU) 2018/841 (‘LULUCF regulation’) sets the accounting rules for the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector in the EU for 2021–2030, i.e. how the emissions and removals of greenhouse gases from LULUCF will be counted towards the climate targets. The LULUCF regulation is part of the EU’s commitment to reduce overall emissions by at least 40% by 2030 under the Climate and Energy framework. Every Member State must balance its accounted greenhouse gas emissions on the LULUCF sector by an equal amount of accounted greenhouse gas removals. Possible surplus removals, under certain conditions and up to an overall total of 280 Mt CO2e, may be used to compensate emissions from the sectors covered by the Effort Sharing Regulation. The technically most complex part of the LULUCF regulation is the set of accounting rules for managed forest land, which are based on a projected Forest Reference Level (FRL), estimated nationally by each EU Member State. The FRL is a benchmark level against which future net emissions from forests are accounted for. In its essence, the FRL is a projection of the net emissions from managed forest land in 2021—2030 (divided into two compliance periods, 2021—2025 and 2026—2030), assuming that the forest management practices had continued similar to the practices in the reference period 2000—2009. This way, the FRL provides a means to account for the impact of policy changes on the emissions and removals from forests, while factoring out the impact of age-related dynamics in the forests. The FRLs for the 2021—2025 period are reported as a part of National Forestry Accounting Plans (NFAPs). After a thorough assessment by the European Commission and a dedicated Expert Group in 2019 and 2020, these FRLs are due to be laid down in a delegated act adopted by the Commission by the end of October 2020. This report outlines the main technical findings of the assessment of the Member States’ proposed FRLs, and complements the forthcoming Commission Staff Working Document (2020) accompanying the delegated act. The assessment found that the Member States had generally followed the principles and criteria laid out in the LULUCF regulation. The NFAPs provide a wealth of information on the forests and forest management practices in the Member States – some of which has not been available for the international community before – and in general include the elements required by the LULUCF regulation. All Member States projected the development of the forest net emissions for 2021—2025 as a continuation of the historical management practices, therefore excluding assumptions on policy development. While the submissions by the Member States were in general detailed and carefully prepared, the assessment identified in several cases minor issues that will need to be amended before the compliance check. The most common issues are related to methodological inconsistencies between carbon pools, greenhouse gases or forest area included in the FRL and those reported in the national greenhouse gas inventories. Some of these mismatches have already been amended by the Member States through Addenda or Corrigenda to the NFAPs. The remaining inconsistencies will be addressed through technical corrections to the FRLs at the end of the compliance period and therefore do not impair the reliability of the FRL as an accounting baseline. For five Member States, the assessment resulted in a recalculation of the Member State-proposed FRL by the Commission. In numerical terms, the sum of the Member States’ FRLs (incl. the United Kingdom) in the delegated act is a projected sink of -337 Mt CO2 y-1 for the period 2021–2025. This projection is about 18% lower than the sink of -413 Mt CO2 y-1 reported by the EU 2019 greenhouse gas inventory on managed forest land for the period 2000—2009 (EEA 2019). The FRL projection is associated with a projected increase of harvest by about 19% over the same period, due to age-related effects. It is noteworthy that the FRLs project sustainable forest management practices as documented in the period 2000–2009, taking into account dynamic age-related forest characteristics, and do not represent an expected sink or expected harvest levels. Instead, the FRLs laid out in the delegated act provide a robust and trustworthy counterfactual for accounting the impact of mitigation actions on emissions and removals from managed forest land in the first compliance period 2021—2025.JRC.D.1-Bio-econom

Spatial problems in long-term forest planning

In modern forest planning, it is important to account for the value of timber production and for other values of the forest. Important factors such as the protection of biodiversity, recreational use and traditional uses of forests are often connected to specific places in forests, or to the spatial structure of the forests. Moreover, the worth of these factors is often difficult to express in objective terms because they are usually valued based on individual preferences or subjective evaluations of complex situations. The objective of this thesis is to analyze specific issues relating to spatial preferences and test approaches that can be used to value them more accurately in forest planning processes. The individual studies appended to this thesis approach spatial preferences from different perspectives. Paper I identifies some difficulties associated with the consideration of spatial preferences in forest planning processes. Paper II describes the development and testing of a method for eliciting spatial preferences. Papers III and IV concentrate on the design and evaluation of forest plans that account for spatial considerations. In Paper III, different fragmentation indices were used to simulate changes in the distribution of different stand types within a forested region over time. Paper IV uses existing information on the requirements of reindeer husbandry concerning forest management practices to evaluate the consequences of adopting different forest management regimes for reindeer husbandry. The results highlight the importance of being careful when eliciting preferences. Particularly when dealing with spatial preferences, where it can be difficult to accurately represent objectives in numerical terms, oversimplification and misinterpretation of preferences can result in the production of plans with undesirable outcomes. The case studies examined in this thesis provide insights to the tradeoffs that must be made between different objectives. The results presented herein should be useful in increasing the efficiency of the planning process in order to ensure that the selected plans match the decision maker's preferences as closely as possible

Spatially explicit analysis of biodiversity loss due to different bioenergy policies in the European Union

The demand for bioenergy is expected to increase rapidly in the EU, driven by policies aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through bioenergy. The downside of the increased use of bioenergy is the risk to biodiversity and ecosystem services, both within the EU but also outside the EU borders through indirect effects. Our study provides a spatially explicit analysis of biodiversity losses from land use, land-use change, and forestry under three different EU bioenergy policy scenarios in the detail of NUTS2 administrative units. The study combined methodologies for biodiversity impact assessment with a global high resolution economic land use model GLOBIOM. Potential loss of global species (PSLglo) was used as an indicator for biodiversity damage, and species loss was quantified using the countryside species area-relationships model (SARs). The Constant demand (CONST), the Baseline (BASE), and the Emission Reduction (EMIRED) scenarios were used for depicting different future biomass demands. All scenarios had similar biomass demand until 2020 but different targets afterwards, from keeping the demand for bioenergy constant (CONST) to a strong increase of bioenergy aiming to decrease GHG emissions by 80% in 2050 (EMIRED) and with the BASE scenario falling in between the other two. The total global biodiversity loss due to EU land use and related changes in net imports was found to reach 1% in 2050 in the BASE scenario. The biodiversity impacts were found to vary only little between the scenarios but instead increase considerably over time in all scenarios, due to increased bioenergy and food demand. The damage was found to increase by 26% from year 2000 to 2050 in the BASE scenario. The difference between scenarios increased over time and in the year 2050 impacts for the EMIRED are 2% larger than in the BASE, meanwhile in the CONST scenario, they are 1.7% lower than in the BASE. The land-use induced impacts on biodiversity were amplified in southern Europe, where the ecoregions are hosting more biodiversity than in the north. In all scenarios, the relative share of indirect impacts through EU imports is expected to increase over time. Imports accounted for 15% of total impacts in the year 2000, and increased to 24-26% in 2050, meaning that relatively more damage would be outsourced by the EU in the future. The main drivers of the direct damage for biodiversity were the increased amount of land used for perennial energy crops and the increased use of forests for biomass supply, while the indirect damage was driven by the increase of agricultural products imports. The expansion of perennial energy crops on agricultural cropland in the EU (especially in the EMIRED scenario) was found to outsource damage elsewhere, as agricultural products would then be increasingly imported from outside EU, partly from regions rich in biodiversity and hosting vulnerable species. This work is part of the Sumforest project Future BioEcon.peerReviewe

Spatially explicit analysis of biodiversity loss due to different bioenergy policies in the European Union

The demand for bioenergy is expected to increase rapidly in the EU, driven by policies aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through bioenergy. The downside of the increased use of bioenergy is the risk to biodiversity and ecosystem services, both within the EU but also outside the EU borders through indirect effects. Our study provides a spatially explicit analysis of biodiversity losses from land use, land-use change, and forestry under three different EU bioenergy policy scenarios in the detail of NUTS2 administrative units. The study combined methodologies for biodiversity impact assessment with a global high resolution economic land use model GLOBIOM. Potential loss of global species (PSLglo) was used as an indicator for biodiversity damage, and species loss was quantified using the countryside species area-relationships model (SARs). The Constant demand (CONST), the Baseline (BASE), and the Emission Reduction (EMIRED) scenarios were used for depicting different future biomass demands. All scenarios had similar biomass demand until 2020 but different targets afterwards, from keeping the demand for bioenergy constant (CONST) to a strong increase of bioenergy aiming to decrease GHG emissions by 80% in 2050 (EMIRED) and with the BASE scenario falling in between the other two. The total global biodiversity loss due to EU land use and related changes in net imports was found to reach 1% in 2050 in the BASE scenario. The biodiversity impacts were found to vary only little between the scenarios but instead increase considerably over time in all scenarios, due to increased bioenergy and food demand. The damage was found to increase by 26% from year 2000 to 2050 in the BASE scenario. The difference between scenarios increased over time and in the year 2050 impacts for the EMIRED are 2% larger than in the BASE, meanwhile in the CONST scenario, they are 1.7% lower than in the BASE. The land-use induced impacts on biodiversity were amplified in southern Europe, where the ecoregions are hosting more biodiversity than in the north. In all scenarios, the relative share of indirect impacts through EU imports is expected to increase over time. Imports accounted for 15% of total impacts in the year 2000, and increased to 24-26% in 2050, meaning that relatively more damage would be outsourced by the EU in the future. The main drivers of the direct damage for biodiversity were the increased amount of land used for perennial energy crops and the increased use of forests for biomass supply, while the indirect damage was driven by the increase of agricultural products imports. The expansion of perennial energy crops on agricultural cropland in the EU (especially in the EMIRED scenario) was found to outsource damage elsewhere, as agricultural products would then be increasingly imported from outside EU, partly from regions rich in biodiversity and hosting vulnerable species. This work is part of the Sumforest project Future BioEcon.peerReviewe

Spatially explicit LCA analysis of biodiversity losses due to different bioenergy policies in the European Union

In this study, the potential global loss of species directly associated with land use in the EU and due to trade with other regions is computed over time, in order to reveal differences in impacts between the considered alternatives of plausible bioenergy policies development in the EU. The spatially explicit study combines a life cycle analysis (LCA) for biodiversity impact assessment with a global high resolution economic land use model. Both impacts of domestic land use and impacts through imports were included for estimating the biodiversity footprint of the member states of the (EU28). The analyzed scenarios assumed similar biomass demand until 2020 but differed thereafter, from keeping the growth of demand for bioenergy constant (CONST), to a strong increase of bioenergy in line with the EU target of decreasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80% by 2050 (EMIRED) and with the baseline (BASE) scenario falling between the other two. As a general trend, the increasing demand for biomass was found to have substantial impact on biodiversity in all scenarios, while the differences between the scenarios were found to be modest. The share caused by imports was 15% of the overall biodiversity impacts detected in this study in the year 2000, and progressively increased to 24% to 26% in 2050, depending on the scenario. The most prominent future change in domestic land use in all scenarios was the expansion of perennial cultivations for energy. In the EMIRED scenario, there is a larger expansion of perennial cultivations and a smaller expansion of cropland in the EU than in the other two scenarios. As the biodiversity damage is smaller for land used for perennial cultivations than for cropland, this development decreases the internal biodiversity damage per unit of land. At the same time, however, the EMIRED scenario also features the largest outsourcing of damage, due to increased import of cropland products from outside the EU for satisfying the EU food demand. These two opposite effects even out each other, resulting in the total biodiversity damage for the EMIRED scenario being only slightly higher than the other two scenarios. The results of this study indicate that increasing cultivation of perennials for bioenergy and the consequent decrease in the availability of cropland for food production in the EU may lead to outsourcing of agricultural products supply to other regions. This development is associated with a leakage of biodiversity damages to species-rich and vulnerable regions outside the EU. In the case of a future increase in bioenergy demand, the combination of biomass supply from sustainable forest management in the EU, combined with imported wood pellets and cultivation of perennial energy crops, appears to be less detrimental to biodiversity than expansion of energy crops in the EU

Cost-efficient strategies to preserve dead wood-dependent species in a managed forest landscape

Negative consequences of intensive forest management on biodiversity are often mitigated by setting aside old forest, but alternative strategies have been suggested. We have compared using simulations the consequences of two of these alternatives setting aside young forests or extending rotation periods - to that of current practice in managed boreal forest In all scenarios we applied a constant conservation budget and predicted forest development and harvesting over 200 years. As a proxy for biodiversity conservation, we projected the extinction risk of a dead wood-dependent beetle, Diacanthous undulatus, in a 50 km(2) landscape in central Sweden, using a colonization-extinction model. During the first century, setting aside young forest stands rather than old stands increased extinction risk because young stands have lower habitat quality. However, habitat quality of young forests increased as they aged and they were much cheaper to set aside than old stands. Therefore, the strategy allowed a larger set-aside area (within the budget constraint), resulting in lower extinction risk and harvested timber volumes in the second century. Prolonging rotations also decreased the extinction risk but was in the long-term less cost-effective. The most cost-effective strategy in the long-term (200 years) was to set aside a mixture of old and young forest. However, setting aside young stands rather than prolonging rotations or setting aside old stands delays both the benefits (lower extinction risk) and costs (lost harvest volumes), so the optimal strategy depends on the assumed societal values and hence discount rates. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Carbon fluxes from land 2000–2020: bringing clarity to countries' reporting

Abstract. Despite an increasing attention on the role of land in meeting countries'climate pledges under the Paris Agreement, the range of estimates of carbonfluxes from land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) in availabledatabases is very large. A good understanding of the LULUCF data reported bycountries under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC) – and of the differences with other datasets based on country-reported data – is crucial to increase confidence in land-based climatechange mitigation efforts. Here we present a new data compilation of LULUCF fluxes of carbon dioxide(CO2) on managed land, aiming at providing a consolidated view on thesubject. Our database builds on a detailed analysis of data from nationalgreenhouse gas inventories (NGHGIs) communicated via a range of countryreports to the UNFCCC, which report anthropogenic emissions and removalsbased on the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) methodology.Specifically, for Annex I countries, data are sourced from annual GHGinventories. For non-Annex I countries, we compiled the most recent andcomplete information from different sources, including nationalcommunications, biennial update reports, submissions to the REDD+(reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) framework, andnationally determined contributions. The data are disaggregated into fluxesfrom forest land, deforestation, organic soils, and other sources (includingnon-forest land uses). The CO2 flux database is complemented byinformation on managed and unmanaged forest area as available in NGHGIs. Toensure completeness of time series, we filled the gaps without altering thelevels and trends of the country reported data. Expert judgement was appliedin a few cases when data inconsistencies existed. Results indicate a mean net global sink of −1.6 Gt CO2 yr−1 over theperiod 2000–2020, largely determined by a sink on forest land (−6.4 Gt CO2 yr−1), followed by source from deforestation (+4.4 Gt CO2 yr−1),with smaller fluxes from organic soils (+0.9 Gt CO2 yr−1) and otherland uses (−0.6 Gt CO2 yr−1). Furthermore, we compare our NGHGI database with two other sets ofcountry-based data: those included in the UNFCCC GHG data interface, andthose based on forest resources data reported by countries to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and usedas inputs into estimates of GHG emissions in FAOSTAT. The first dataset,once gap filled as in our study, results in a net global LULUCF sink of −5.4 Gt CO2 yr−1. The difference with the NGHGI database is in this casemostly explained by more updated and comprehensive data in our compilationfor non-Annex I countries. The FAOSTAT GHG dataset instead estimates a netglobal LULUCF source of +1.1 Gt CO2 yr−1. In this case, most of thedifference to our results is due to a much greater forest sink for non-AnnexI countries in the NGHGI database than in FAOSTAT. The difference betweenthese datasets can be mostly explained by a more complete coverage in theNGHGI database, including for non-biomass carbon pools and non-forest landuses, and by different underlying data on forest land. The latter reflectsthe different scopes of the country reporting to FAO, which focuses on areaand biomass, and to UNFCCC, which explicitly focuses on carbon fluxes.Bearing in mind the respective strengths and weaknesses, both our NGHGIdatabase and FAO offer a fundamental, yet incomplete, source of informationon carbon-related variables for the scientific and policy communities,including under the Global stocktake. Overall, while the quality and quantity of the LULUCF data submitted bycountries to the UNFCCC significantly improved in recent years, importantgaps still remain. Most developing countries still do not explicitlyseparate managed vs. unmanaged forest land, a few report implausibly highforest sinks, and several report incomplete estimates. With these limits inmind, the NGHGI database presented here represents the most up-to-date andcomplete compilation of LULUCF data based on country submissions to UNFCCC. Data from this study are openly available via the Zenodo portal (Grassi etal., 2022), at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7190601