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Effects of Forest Age Structure, Management and Gradual Climate Change on Carbon Sequestration and Timber Production in Finnish Boreal Forests

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Managing Forest Ecosystems: The Challenge of Climate Change

Part of the book series: Managing Forest Ecosystems ((MAFE,volume 34))

Abstract

In this work, we employed two different ecosystem models in two separate case studies to assess the effects of forest age structure, management and gradual climate change on timber production and carbon sequestration of Finnish boreal forests with Norway spruce as main (dominant) tree species. Our case study examples demonstrated that over the 90 years simulation period the total timber production was from 16 to 30 % lower in southern Finland under the mild (SRES B1) and strong (SRES A2) climate change scenarios . In the northern Finland, the total timber production increased regardless of climate change scenario applied. Furthermore, both total timber production, its economic profitability and carbon stocks of forest ecosystem could be increased simultaneously if higher stocking (growing stock volume) was maintained over the rotation compared to the Finnish baseline forest management. However, timber production and carbon sequestration could not be maximised simultaneously. Thus, any preference of carbon sequestration in forest management would reduce the timber production and would result on opportunity costs.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Finnish Meteorological Institute, and especially Dr. Kirsti Jylhä and Dr. Kimmo Ruosteenoja, for providing for the ADAPT project (proj. 14907) the ACCLIM climate change scenarios (SRES B1 and SRES A2). This work was partly funded by the UEF foundation (project 930341) and partially supported by Project PTDC/AGR-FOR/4526/2012 Models and Decision Support Systems for Adressing Risk and Uncertainty in Forest Planning (SADRI). Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo was supported by a “Ramon y Cajal” research contract from the MINECO (Ref. RYC-2013-14262) and from CERCA Programme / Generalitat de Catalunya.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Forest Research Centre, School of Agricuture, University of Lisbon, Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-017, Lisbon, Portugal

    Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo

  2. Forest Sciences Centre of Catalonia (CTFC), Ctra de St. Llorenç de Morunys Km 2, E25280, Solsona, Spain

    Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo

  3. School of Forest Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, 111, 80101, Joensuu, Finland

    Ane Zubizarreta-Gerendiain, Seppo Kellomäki & Heli Peltola

  4. Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), Scientific Campus of the University of the Basque Country, Sede Building 1, 1st floor, 48008, Bilbao, Spain

    Ane Zubizarreta-Gerendiain

Authors
  1. Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo
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  2. Ane Zubizarreta-Gerendiain
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  3. Seppo Kellomäki
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  4. Heli Peltola
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Correspondence to Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. ETS de Ingenierías Agrarias - Universidad de Valladolid & iuFOR - Sustainable Forest Management Research Institute Universidad de Valladolid - INIA, Palencia, Spain

    Felipe Bravo

  2. Forest Resources Management Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Valerie LeMay

  3. Austrian Research Centre for Forests (BFW), Vienna, Austria

    Robert Jandl

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Garcia-Gonzalo, J., Zubizarreta-Gerendiain, A., Kellomäki, S., Peltola, H. (2017). Effects of Forest Age Structure, Management and Gradual Climate Change on Carbon Sequestration and Timber Production in Finnish Boreal Forests. In: Bravo, F., LeMay, V., Jandl, R. (eds) Managing Forest Ecosystems: The Challenge of Climate Change. Managing Forest Ecosystems, vol 34. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28250-3_14

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