Suchergebnisse

Lithuania and Southern Sweden share similar natural conditions, but differ considerably in forest policies and management; thereby providing an opportune basis for comparative studies. Since the 1990s, Sweden has attempted to reduce the negative impact of its forest management on biodiversity, after decades of intensive production forestry. In contrast, Lithuania has been intensifying forestry practices associated with the post-soviet socio-economic transition. Here we assess the actual outcomes by comparing selected forest structure and composition variables known to be indicators for forest biodiversity; and estimate the prospective trends by scrutinising current forest policies and management. Our results indicate that Lithuanian forests consistently possessed higher rankings in six indices related to tree species composition, stand age, and deadwood quantities that are positively associated with forest biodiversity. The reverse is indicated by those data on stand age and tree diameter that are associated with centennial dynamics in forest utilisation intensity. With respect to policy instruments, Lithuania designates a substantially greater share of forest area to non-timber functions and legislates more severe management restrictions in forests targeting timber production. Concurrently, all estimates of forestry activities indicate more intensive forest management in Southern Sweden, including a higher share of artificial regeneration and shorter rotations. This allows concluding that, if current forest management practices persist, then an increased "biodiversity gap" may be expected between the two countries. The study concludes with discussing to what degree the identified trends are the direct product of targeted policies versus merely by-products of other factors.

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.