BiodivERsA Scenarios for a sustainable future forest green infrastructure

GreenFutureForest has generated increased understanding of how the global socio-economy, which includes the global timber trade, scales down to timber demand at national level, which next affects the management and persistence of species in the green infrastructure. We studied this chain of interactions the coming 100 years using scenario simulations. The scenarios led to different demand of wood at national level, determining the different green infrastructure planning in continental Germany and northern Sweden. A major difference is the larger area of clearcutting in Sweden, which may be needed to meet the global demand of wood and will give highest economic revenue to large land-owners. However, under uncertainties imposed by future climate change, it may be economically beneficial for small forest owners to adopt multifunctional or continuous cover forestry (common in Germany), serving as a natural insurance. We further show that there will be a wide range of responses among forest bird species to the various management scenarios simulated for Germany, with some species even increasing under intensive forestry. For Sweden, we show that increasing area with clearcutting forestry will decrease the abundance of deadwood fungi specialized on old-growth forest features, such as large downed logs in old forest. We revealed that this decrease result from a combination of decreasing local colonization rate and increasing extinction rate with increasing species specialization. Specialized species therefore often do not succeed in colonizing forest stands before they are clearcut, leading to rarity in managed forest landscapes. This understanding of the underlying mechanisms explaining their projected future occupancy decline was possible thanks to conducting the species projections using dynamic models of colonization of and (subsequent) extinction from forest stands between time steps. Until now, projections have been typically conducted using static models for species occurrence. Such models are applicable for birds that are in equilibrium with landscape structure, and we also developed a standard protocol for describing such models. However, we show that equilibrium cannot be assumed for sessile species, such as deadwood fungi. Finally, we evaluated the usefulness of opportunistically collected citizen science data (CSD) against systematically collected data as the basis to answer questions in ecology and conservation. We conclude that CSD may indeed be useful, and even found that for rare species models based on CSD may even be better than models based on data from systematic monitoring studies.

Our work provides a template for connecting the chain of global socio-economic scenarios with national-, regional- and landscape-scale provisioning of timber demand that affect forestry and conservation, in turn affecting species occurrences and spatially explicit metapopulation dynamics the coming 100 year. Our evaluation of Citizen Science Data against systematic research data strengthens the basis for starting to make more use of the very large amounts of CSD. We demonstrate the use of more mechanistic, dynamic colonization-extinction models for conducting projections for sessile species, instead of static species occurrence models that typically assume equilibrium. Finally, we show that forest owners may benefit economically from adopting multifunctional or continuous cover forestry instead of clearcutting monoculture forestry, as natural insurance against uncertainties imposed by climate change. This will also increase the delivery of non-woody ecosystem services and biodiversity.

Wood production is a pivotal provisioning ecosystem service of major economic importance, yet inappropriate forest utilization is a key reason for species declines across Europe. It is essential to rethink current forestry to secure a high future timber yield and viable (meta)populations of forest-dwelling species, both of which are major aspects of the green infrastructure (GI). In this context, we use an integrated modelling approach by combining forest growth, occupancy and (meta)population models to address the following eight research aims: 1) We estimate the global demand for wood and the potential for regional wood supply in central European and boreal forests during the coming 100 years. 2) We simulate landscape-scale forestry and conservation scenarios that are profitable and allow long-term persistence of species. 3) We review major uncertainties related to climate change and potential adaptive responses in forestry. 4) We test for effects of forest structure, spatial connectivity and climate variables on the (meta)population dynamics and occurrence of ecologically different sessile and mobile species, and 5) develop models for the large-scale distribution and landscape-scale (meta)population dynamics of focal species combining systematic research data and Citizen Science Data. 6) We test for differences in projected (meta)population sizes in the GI among the scenarios. 7) We implement (meta)population models in two widely used forestry planning tools (Heureka, SILVA). 8) We jointly design the scenarios, interpret the results, disseminate conclusions, and facilitate the use of the forestry planning tools together with the participating stakeholders. This project will increase our understanding of how current and future forestry practice will affect the viability of focal (meta)populations in the GI. We integrate methods in forestry, ecology and biology together in a holistic landscape-level approach to better understand and manage forested landscapes.