Forest management practices for climate targets and environmental objectives – adaptive strategies based on novel combinations of ecosystem modelling, policy analysis and visualisation

The forest contribute to human well-being in many ways. To avoid overuse and unintentional ecosystem changes, this multi-functionality has to be addressed when developing forest management strategies and policies. The aim of this transdisciplinary project is to quantify and visualize the contribution of different adaptive management strategies to climate solutions and fulfillment of environmental objectives during the transition towards a fossil-free society. We will involve forest owners, forest advisors and people working with nature protection in discussions on climate impacts and ecosystem services, for co-production of explorative scenarios. We will address goal conflicts and their underlying causes, and how knowledge and uncertainties concerning ecosystem services and climate change can influence the choice of forest management strategy. We will develop composite indicators to allow for comparison of
complex data from multiple ecosystem model runs, quantifying the impacts of climate change and forest management on the provisioning of ecosystem services, forestry economy and risk taking. Science-stakeholder discussions will together with the composite indicators form the basis for novel visualizations of the outcome of adaptive management strategies. The results will be presented as scenario-based stories, depicting the structure and functioning of managed forest ecosystems in relation to a range of climate futures.

This project is funded by BECC (www.becc.lu.se).