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

Abstract

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 Dieback, a Tangible Proof of Climate Change? A Cross-Comparison of Forest Stakeholders’ Perceptions and Strategies in the Mountain Forests of Europe and China

“…As interviewees opted for very different adaptive forest management orientations, ranging from business-as-usual to transformative strategies, we decided to build a typology of adaptation behaviors. This typology is based on influential structural variables and logics of action that are commonly found in forest owners' typologies (Deuffic et al 2018;Ficko et al 2019;Van Herzele and Van Gossum 2008;Weiss et al 2019) and attitudes towards climate change (André et al 2017;Blennow et al 2012;Lodin et al 2020;Van Gameren and Zaccai 2015):…”

Improving the Representation of Climate Change Adaptation Behaviour in New Zealand’s Forest Growing Sector

“…The need to understand decision-making in terms of climate-related risks in climatesensitive sectors such as forestry is widely recognized [15][16][17][18]. This includes the need for models that can simulate future adaptations under evolving climatic and socio-economic uncertainty by explicitly representing adaptation and non-rational behaviours that underpin decision making [11,19].…”

Management of Multiple Ecosystem Services under Climate Change, Bioeconomy and Participation

“…Simulation systems have been widely used to project the future provision of goods and services and analyze the effect of changing forest policies or even the impacts of climate change. Lodin et al [20] investigated the extent of increasing wood demands under defined climate change mitigation scenarios with different management intensities in Sweden using the Heureka Planwise DSS system. They showed that the achievement of traditional forest management objectives is truly limited to the projected climate change scenarios.…”