Accounting for a Diverse Forest Ownership Structure in Projections of Forest Sustainability Indicators

Abstract

Abstract:In this study, we assessed the effect of a diverse ownership structure with different management strategies within and between owner categories in long-term projections of economic, ecological and social forest sustainability indicators, representing important ecosystem services, for two contrasting Swedish municipalities. This was done by comparing two scenarios: one where the diversity of management strategies was accounted for (Diverse) and one where it was not (Simple). The Diverse scenario resulted in a 14% lower total harvested volume for the 100 year period compared to the Simple scenario, which resulted in a higher growing stock and a more favorable development of the ecological indicators. The higher proportion of sparse forests and the lower proportion of clear-felled sites made the Diverse scenario more appropriate for delivering access to common outdoor recreation activities, while the Simple scenario projected more job opportunities. Differences between the scenarios were considerable already in the medium term (after 20 years of simulation). Our results highlight the importance of accounting for the variety of management strategies employed by forest owners in medium-to long-term projections of the development of forest sustainability indicators. OPEN ACCESSForests 2015, 6 4002

Implementing Collaborative Planning in the Swedish Mountains – The Case of Vilhelmina

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

“…Some scenario studies following the new trend have solely focused on including empirically grounded specifications reflecting current owner behavior without considering changes in external drivers (e.g., [14][15][16]). As a recent example, Eggers et al [16] accounted for the diversity of management strategies among owners when projecting the provisioning of ecosystem services in two Swedish municipalities. The results clearly showed that detailed differentiation of owners' management behavior makes a difference when projecting ecosystem services.…”

Visualizing the Forest in a Boreal Forest Landscape—The Perspective of Swedish Municipal Comprehensive Planning

“…Furthermore, land use and forests in Vilhelmina have been studied and described from various perspectives over the years cf. [25,66,67,[102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111]. This history gives a unique opportunity to combine and compare information from our study with other research to further analyze and learn about local forests from a municipal perspective.…”

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