Green infrastructures and intensive forestry: Need and opportunity for spatial planning in a Swedish rural–urban gradient

Abstract

There is a current industrial and societal interest in Europe to further intensify the yield of wood for the forest industry and biomass. At the same time, green infrastructures for ecological and sociocultural values in forest landscapes should be functional. Municipalities have exclusive responsibility for comprehensive planning in Sweden. We modelled the spatial distribution of green infrastructures in terms of three forest types with high ecological values, and three sociotopes with high sociocultural values in 119 municipalities in a ruralÁurban gradient in Sweden. Forest land without such values should be available for intensive forestry with lower conflict risk. We also estimated the municipalities' potential for physical planning in terms of financial and social capital, and ownership category structure. The area of functional green infrastructures varied considerably among municipalities. Municipalities with a high proportion of functional green infrastructure, thus less available for intensive forestry, were characterised by a stronger tax base, higher population density and lower demographic dependency ratio, and lower proportions of industrial and state forest ownership. We discuss the need for and opportunities of introducing collaborative physical planning to accommodate multiple demands on forest landscapes. We conclude that to accommodate both functional green infrastructures and intensive forestry, a landscape approach including knowledge-based collaboration is needed at multiple-levels of governance and management.

Learning About the History of Landscape Use for the Future: Consequences for Ecological and Social Systems in Swedish Bergslagen

“…Thus, there has been a long history of competing demands of goods, functions, and values in Bergslagen (Herou 2000; Andersson et al. 2012a, b). …”

Measurement, Collaborative Learning and Research for Sustainable Use of Ecosystem Services: Landscape Concepts and Europe as Laboratory

“…This interpretation (BPh-2), unlike BPh-1, emerged and is developing successfully in North America and West Europe. It is especially effective in wildlife management and biodiversity conservation (e.g., Hansson and Angelstam 1991), and provides a scientific background for planning and management of habitat networks (Nowicki et al 1996; Andersson et al 2012b). In the former USSR states, and especially in Russia where natural landscapes are still dominating on its vast areas, the landscape matrix idea is not as popular as in the West, and is used only occasionally in planning of ecological networks (Deodatus and Protsenko 2010).…”

Defining Benchmarks for Restoration of Green Infrastructure: A Case Study Combining the Historical Range of Variability of Habitat and Species’ Requirements

“…The solution is to establish ecological networks [8,9] in terms of habitat patches with sufficient quality, size, and juxtaposition [10,11]. We define a functional habitat network as one that can maintain local populations of the most demanding focal species [12].…”