Publications

Mountain forests provide not only wood as a raw material but also numerous ecosystem services, such as protection against natural hazards, recreation and carbon sequestration, and they are important hosts for biodiversity. To manage these forests efficiently and in a target-oriented manner, both forest management planning and efficient harvesting operations are required. However, in most cases these two aspects are handled independently from each other. To link planning with forest operations, it is essential to divide forests into smaller areas with characteristics that are as homogeneous as possible, so-called forest management units (FMUs). The goal is that each FMU has self-contained fine access (e.g. skid roads, cable roads), and that the FMUs can be managed and planned independently. The aim of this study was to develop a spatial optimisation model that automatically identifies FMUs. The optimisation has three goals: [I] FMUs should be as compact as possible (spatially contiguous as the best case); [II] forest management should be technically and operationally coordinated within an FMU; and [III] FMUs should be as homogeneous as possible, for example regarding site properties, ecosystem service provided, and administrative affiliation. Results showed that our presented spatial optimisation model is a capable method for automatically identifying FMUs. The approach used to set up the model based on a p-median problem formulation (mixed integer linear programming) led to clearly comprehensible solutions that can be achieved in a reasonable computation time. Three solving strategies for successful computation implementation are described. Although the raw results must be reviewed by experts, they facilitate the planning process. More scenarios can be evaluated compared with the classical manual planning approach, ultimately leading to higher-quality solutions. © 2024 Elsevier Ltd

Climate change poses significant threats to ecosystems and biodiversity. Conventional management strategies often fall short, leading to uncertainties in addressing these challenges. Natural and environmental scientists play a crucial role by providing evidence-based guidance. Social science research, at the same time, highlights the complexity of transferring and applying knowledge across different social and professional groups and shows that further research is needed. Using a German case study, my research addresses this issue by examining the dynamics between predictive climate risk maps, intended as decision-support tool for forest management, the developing scientists, the receiving environmental managers and further political actors. Semi-structured qualitative interviews with representatives from these groups were conducted and analyzed, revealing that climate risk maps can function as predictive boundary objects, balancing flexibility and robustness. With their high level of visual and epistemic power, these maps generate knowledge tensions, facilitate interactions, and foster the implicit co-production of broader environmental management discourse. At the same time the maps are continuously contested, discussed, and updated through feedback, becoming themselves part of an ongoing informal co-productive process. This dual role creates ambiguity: they provide concrete answers to specific management related questions while highlighting simultaneously limitations that prompt more fundamental inquiries, driving an overall societal learning process. Hence, future efforts should enhance formal support for co-productive processes to ensure evidence-based advisory tools are scientifically robust, contextually adapted, and democratize knowledge dynamics through continuous dialogue, mutual learning, and integration of scientific as well as local knowledge. © 2024 The Authors

Background: Modern land management faces unprecedented uncertainty regarding future climates, novel disturbance regimes, and unanticipated ecological feedbacks. Mitigating this uncertainty requires a cohesive landscape management strategy that utilizes multiple methods to optimize benefits while hedging risks amidst uncertain futures. We used a process-based landscape simulation model (LANDIS-II) to forecast forest management, growth, climate effects, and future wildfire dynamics, and we distilled results using a decision support tool allowing us to examine tradeoffs between alternative management strategies. We developed plausible future management scenarios based on factorial combinations of restoration-oriented thinning prescriptions, prescribed fire, and wildland fire use. Results were assessed continuously for a 100-year simulation period, which provided a unique assessment of tradeoffs and benefits among seven primary topics representing social, ecological, and economic aspects of resilience. Results: Projected climatic changes had a substantial impact on modeled wildfire activity. In the Wildfire Only scenario (no treatments, but including active wildfire and climate change), we observed an upwards inflection point in area burned around mid-century (2060) that had detrimental impacts on total landscape carbon storage. While simulated mechanical treatments (~ 3% area per year) reduced the incidence of high-severity fire, it did not eliminate this inflection completely. Scenarios involving wildland fire use resulted in greater reductions in high-severity fire and a more linear trend in cumulative area burned. Mechanical treatments were beneficial for subtopics under the economic topic given their positive financial return on investment, while wildland fire use scenarios were better for ecological subtopics, primarily due to a greater reduction in high-severity fire. Benefits among the social subtopics were mixed, reflecting the inevitability of tradeoffs in landscapes that we rely on for diverse and countervailing ecosystem services. Conclusions: This study provides evidence that optimal future scenarios will involve a mix of active and passive management strategies, allowing different management tactics to coexist within and among ownerships classes. Our results also emphasize the importance of wildfire management decisions as central to building more robust and resilient future landscapes. © The Author(s) 2024.

Fire and drought are expected to increase in frequency and severity in temperate forests due to climate change. To evaluate whether drought increases the likelihood of post-fire tree mortality, we used a large database of tree survival and mortality from 32 years of wildland fires covering four dominant western North American conifers. We used Bayesian hierarchical modeling to predict the probability of individual tree mortality after fire based on species—Pinus contorta (lodgepole pine), Abies concolor (white fir), Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas-fir), and Pinus ponderosa (ponderosa pine)—bark thickness, bark char, percentage live tree crown scorched or consumed crown volume scorch (CVS), and mean annual climatic water deficit (CWD) anomalies the year pre-fire and fire year relative to the 1985–2015 reference period. Although crown injury was the primary determinant of tree mortality after fire, drought increased likelihood of death, with a 2-SD increase in CWD (+115.7) resulting in a 78% increase in the probability of mortality. We assessed the crown scorch level expected to result in >50% probability of mortality under different CWD scenarios: observed CWD, CWD of +2, and +4°C warming scenarios. Increased climatic moisture stress amplified tree death, reducing the threshold that causes tree mortality across all conifers under +4°C warming, with more subtle and species-specific reductions for the +2°C scenario. Models predicting post-fire tree mortality are components of global and regional carbon estimates, habitat suitability assessments, and forest management planning and decision support systems. The amplifying effects of drought on post-fire tree mortality and predicted future climates are likely to lead to higher tree mortality following fires in forested landscapes of western North America and may have cascading effects on ecosystem services and future forest resilience. © 2024 The Author(s). Ecosphere published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America.

The positive and transversal value of the forestry sector within the various international, European and national policies related to sustainable development and mitigation and adaptation to climate change is now widely recognised. This contribution is linked to the biological and evolutionary times of forest ecosystems and therefore cannot be separated from far-sighted strategic and programmatic political choices that guarantee the protection and conservation of the natural heritage and the rational use of resources. To be effective, this action needs to be able to count on information and knowledge that are not only constant and detailed but also reliable and verifiable and in large quantities. The availability of statistical and cartographic data concerning the forest heritage and the related production sectors is therefore essential for planning and management purposes. For these reasons, Italy has decided to launch an important process of reorganization and harmonization of statistical and cartographic knowledge on forests and the national forest-based sector, in line with the proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on a European Forest Resilience Monitoring Framework (COM/2023/728 final). This communication aims to present the participative process and the main contents of the new National Forest Information System (SINFor) and the identification of the minimum knowledge that needs to be collected. © 2024 Elsevier B.V.

Due to their high variability, the growth responses of western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla (Raf.) Sarg.) stands to fertilization have been regarded as unresponsive or inconsistent. Tree-level fertilization response models for western hemlock were constructed to clarify the inconsistent stand-level responses, using extensive datasets from the United States and Canada. Tree growth in diameter and height, mortality, were assessed by fertilization, stand-and tree-level variables using generalized linear and nonlinear mixed-effects models. Western hemlock fertilization response was influenced not only by stand-level variables and application rates but also by tree social status and crown characteristics. Greater dominance and crown ratio in trees increased height growth responses but decreased diameter growth. The peak of fertilization effect on diameter growth was observed 3 years after application, while effect on height growth peaked at 6 years. Fertilization increased the overall mortality rate, but also ameliorated it for suppressed and steady-growing trees. These complicated fertilization responses of western hemlock may imply its tolerance and allocation strategy of resources at a given size and social status. The results highlight the importance of adopting a tree-level modeling approach to better understanding how western hemlock trees respond to fertilization, improving the accuracy of growth and yield prediction after fertilization. © 2024, Canadian Science Publishing. All rights reserved.

Purpose of Review: The spatial forest planning concept has evolved as an essential component of the forest management planning process. The development of both exact and heuristic modeling techniques as analytical solution techniques have seen significant progress in application to spatial forest planning over the last two decades. This paper aims at providing a comprehensive review of the current state of spatial forest planning in both scope and depth, focusing on different approaches and techniques used, the challenges faced, and the potential future developments. For that purpose, we conduct a world-wide literature review and an extensive analysis of the status and trends over the past two decades in spatial forest planning. Recent Findings: The literature review indicates that recent advancements have led to the development of new algorithms/formulations for addressing spatial constraints in forest planning with exact solution techniques. Nevertheless, it highlights further that heuristic techniques are still widely used, especially in large real-world problems that encompass multiple ecosystem services and constraints. Besides the provisioning services, there has been a noticeable increase in the proportion of regulating, supporting and cultural services addressed in objective functions of forest management planning models. Adjacency/green-up relationships, opening size, core area, wildlife habitat and the spatial arrangement of fuel treatments have been considered as indicators to address the provision of these services and spatial forest problem. Summary: We pinpoint persistent challenges to using exact modeling techniques to address large real problems with multiple ecosystems services. We highlight further that determining the optimal combination and values of heuristic parameters and assessing the quality of heuristic solutions remains a central challenge. Finally, we highlight the potential of artificial intelligence to overcome computational obstacles to the application of both exact and heuristic techniques to spatially explicit forest management planning. © The Author(s) 2024.

Purpose of Review: The spatial forest planning concept has evolved as an essential component of the forest management planning process. The development of both exact and heuristic modeling techniques as analytical solution techniques have seen significant progress in application to spatial forest planning over the last two decades. This paper aims at providing a comprehensive review of the current state of spatial forest planning in both scope and depth, focusing on different approaches and techniques used, the challenges faced, and the potential future developments. For that purpose, we conduct a world-wide literature review and an extensive analysis of the status and trends over the past two decades in spatial forest planning. Recent Findings: The literature review indicates that recent advancements have led to the development of new algorithms/formulations for addressing spatial constraints in forest planning with exact solution techniques. Nevertheless, it highlights further that heuristic techniques are still widely used, especially in large real-world problems that encompass multiple ecosystem services and constraints. Besides the provisioning services, there has been a noticeable increase in the proportion of regulating, supporting and cultural services addressed in objective functions of forest management planning models. Adjacency/green-up relationships, opening size, core area, wildlife habitat and the spatial arrangement of fuel treatments have been considered as indicators to address the provision of these services and spatial forest problem. Summary: We pinpoint persistent challenges to using exact modeling techniques to address large real problems with multiple ecosystems services. We highlight further that determining the optimal combination and values of heuristic parameters and assessing the quality of heuristic solutions remains a central challenge. Finally, we highlight the potential of artificial intelligence to overcome computational obstacles to the application of both exact and heuristic techniques to spatially explicit forest management planning. © The Author(s) 2024.

Forest management plans (FMP) are key decision-support tools for forest managers and a central policy instrument in many countries. Despite its pivotal importance in forest management, there is a lack of studies that analyze the acquisition, familiarity and implementation of the FMP. These steps collectively contribute to making FMP a successful decision-support tool and forest policy instrument. We surveyed a sample representative of the population of Norwegian non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners to quantify the importance of a broad set of factors, including ownership objectives, socio-demographic, property and information sources variables on the FMP pathway, i.e. acquisition of FMP, awareness of its content and implementation of the plans’ proposals. Applying principal component analysis on twelve ownership objectives, we found that most forest owners are multiobjective. We combined conditional classification trees and logistic regression analyses on the FMP pathway to unveil familiarity and use of FMP in forest owner subgroups as well as individual drivers. The results indicate that 37% of Norwegian NIPF owners have a FMP. Among the owners having FMP, 66% have good knowledge of its content and 40% implement its proposals. The strongest variables to predict FMP familiarity and use were previous harvests, productive area, advice about forestry from the public management, knowledge of public support schemes for forestry and perceived relevance of the FMP. We conclude that FMP suppliers, consultants, forestry bureaucracy and policy-makers should emphasize information dissemination and relevance of the FMP to increase its success as a decision-support tool and forest policy instrument. © The Author(s) 2024.

Various research endeavours are designed to identify ecosystem services, assess their spatial distribution, and prioritize them in a given forest landscape. The Turkish State Forest Organization has introduced an ecosystem-based multiple-use forest management philosophy since 2008, which emphasizes the need for identifying and allocating ecosystem services to each forest planning unit. This paper aims to investigate the use of Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) techniques and explores their effectiveness and suitability in identifying and allocating ecosystem services to forest units, considering scientific suitability, stakeholder engagement and the sustainability concept in the context of ecosystem-based forest management decision-making processes in a case study area of Turkey. We propose a framework that entails an iterative process comprising various stages, starting from identifying ecosystem services (ES) to allocating them to forest stands with a participatory approach. We employed the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Delphi method to determine stakeholder preferences and allocate ecosystem services to forest stands. This was achieved through an equation newly developed using scientific suitability, stakeholder preferences, and the sustainability concept. The landscape percentage allocated primarily to ES was as follows: water regulation (55.44%), soil protection (16.47%), biodiversity conservation (14.03%), wood production (13.08%), and aesthetic-recreation (0.84%). Notably, no allocations were made for national defence and climate regulation services. In conclusion, the stratification of Posof forests into zones was efficiently achieved a priori, considering both scientific-technical and socio-cultural criteria through MCDA techniques based on stakeholder preferences. This study streamlines the decision-making process involved in spatially allocating ecosystem services and provides crucial information instrumental in determining management objectives and optimal forest activities. © 2024 Elsevier Ltd