Sustainable and multifunctional use of forest biomass

Important results from the project

Yes, the goals were met. The project has led to a new way of calculating the climate impact of forestry and identified parameters with a large impact on climate. The results can influence political decisions on harvesting levels, reserve areas and national spatial distribution of these. Results of the research can contribute to the discussion about the trade-off between Nordic forestry that focuses on producing short- or long-lived products, and the impacts on biodiversity of these trade-offs.

Expected long term effects

Research on forestry and how it affects biodiversity and climate has been carried out separately for a long time. The unique thing about our project is that we have developed an integrated optimization system that enables joint analysis of all these objectives for the forest, and thus more complex but at the same time socially relevant questions. We can e.g. identify how the forest should be managed with good yields and at the same time achieve objectives for biodiversity and climate.

Approach and implementation

We combined joint physical and digital meetings for all or parts of the consortium with physical meetings within each Partnership. We had both physical and digital meetings with the stakeholders as well. There was some delay in the development of the climate impact calculation and implementing it in the optimizer, so postdocs in my Partnership had to start learning optimization based on a study that excluded climate impacts. The collaboration has worked very well, as planned.