Accounting for global drivers in landscape-level assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services

Date:
2018/06/13

Time:
14:45

Room:
A2 Wivi

Accounting for global drivers in landscape-level assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services

(Oral)

Jeannette Eggers
jeannette.eggers@slu.se

Swedish Species Information Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
,
Ljusk Ola Eriksson
Department of Forest Resource Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
,
Eva-Maria Nordström
Department of Forest Resource Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
,
Tord Snäll
Swedish Species Information Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden

DOI: 10.17011/conference/eccb2018/107755

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Wood production is a pivotal provisioning ecosystem service of major economic importance, yet its intensive utilization is a key reason for species declines in the EU and globally. A transition from a fossil- to a bio-based economy requires increased mobilization of raw materials from forests. It is therefore essential to find ways to fulfil the increasing wood demand while conserving biodiversity.

Wood and various other ecosystem services, as well as biodiversity are produced locally in forest landscapes. However, the demand for wood products is increasingly determined by a global market, i.e. outside the landscape in question. It is at the local level where the trade-off between increased timber harvests and biodiversity conservation, as well as other land-use conflicts, needs to be resolved. This requires a multilevel perspective - local-level scenarios of forest management and conservation need to consider external drivers such as the global wood demand¹.

Here, our aim was to investigate how global drivers can be accounted for in landscape-level assessments. Global wood demand was projected by the MESSAGE-GLOBIOM modeling framework² for different combinations of shared socio-economic pathways and climate scenarios. Next, the resulting national level projections of demanded wood volumes and prices for the case of Sweden were downscaled to the landscape level with a partial equilibrium model (PEM). To find market equilibria, the PEM combines the national demand for sawn timber, pulpwood and forest fuel with potential forest supply. Potential supply and associated silvicultural, harvesting and transporting costs were computed with the Heureka forest simulator³ for a 100-year time period based on some 10,000 National Forest Inventory (NFI) plots covering Sweden. The NFI plots are linked with expansion factors to make them representative of the total productive forest area. Thus, the supply from the NFI plots in the landscape in question defines the landscape-level wood demand.

In a next step, the resulting landscape-level wood demand will be used in the formulation and simulation of forestry and conservation scenarios for a forest landscape in northern Sweden. We will link scenario projections in terms of forest variables, and their change over time, to (meta)population dynamics of focal species, and investigate local impacts of changes in global wood demand on various ecosystem services and biodiversity.

The work is part of the BiodivERsA project GreenFutureForest.

References:

1. Nordström, E.-M. et al. Impacts of global climate change mitigation scenarios on forests and harvesting in Sweden. Can. J. For. Res. 46, 1427-1438 (2016).

2. Krey, V. et al. MESSAGE-GLOBIOM 1.0 Documentation. (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), 2016).

3. Wikström, P., et al., 2011. The Heureka forestry decision support system: an overview. Mathematical and Computational Forestry & Natural Resource Sciences, 3(2), p.87-95.

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INTRO:
The authors explore local-scale impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity of global wood demand on a context of transition from a fossil- to a bio-based economy.
MERITS:
The manuscript addresses first, the challenge of downscaling global wood demand scenarios into landscape-level wood demands, then how regional forestry (to fulfil these demands) influences meta-population dynamics of focal species.
CRITIQUE:
The abstract does not present any problem.
DISCUSSION:
This research advances in the field of downscaling global-scales environmental policies into regional forest management strategies and how to evaluate the impacts of global bio-economy policies on local biodiversity.

- - -
INTRO:
The study explores how global demands of ecosystem services (forest products) influence forest management and biodiversity conservation at the local and landscape-scale. In particular, it presents a methodology to incorporate in forest simulations at the local and landscape scale (National Forest Inventory plots) the influence of drivers operating at larger scales (wood volumes and prices at the national and supranational scales).
MERITS:
One of the most interesting aspects of this study is its multi-scale perspective. Generally, it is hard to integrate - numerically and realistically - the influence of drivers operating at multiple scales on a given local system. This study shows a methodology to approach this challenge, using ascase study the global demands of wood based products, the EU bioeconomy policies and the forests of Sweden.
CRITIQUE:
The Partial Equilibrium Model mentioned in the abstract seems to be the key element to achieve the integration of global drivers into landscale/local forest simulations. Given this study focuses on the methodological part of multi-driver, multi-scale integration, as a reader of the abstract - and/or potential attendee to the symposium- I would like to know more details about the PEM model (how does it work exactly? what type of model is it (eg. process based)?, what are the inputs and outputs of the model? - I understand wood demand is an output, but how exactly this wood demand can be linked to further simulations/models of ecosystem service provision and biodiversity values? through changes in forest composition? changes in forest structure?).
DISCUSSION:
Europe is committed to improve the management of natural resources, conserve biodiversity and to promote sustainable markets for bio-based products. In this regard, the study presented here is very relevant to explore the interactions between bioeconomy- and biodiversity-related European policies. Also, the study is very timely in that there are not many studies exploring the effects of drivers operating at multiple scales on local forest management (very much needed in the current context of global change).

- - -
INTRO:
This abstract describes an approach to help understand the link between global demand, local supply and the impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity. This is a timely issue, as the need to move away from the use of fossil fuels is a pressing issue, and understanding the potential consequences environmental issues in the forests due to increased wood extraction.
MERITS:
From what I have read from the abstract, the process used to compare between global demand and local supply seems to be well thought through. From this kind of analysis I beleive that there should be value in understanding how ecological issues are impacted by various wood demand issues.
CRITIQUE:
As an abstract these issues may be actually non-issues, as the detail cannot be included: As the authors are focusing on landscapes, I'm unsure of the size of landscapes being considered here. Does the study focus on a single landscape or multiple landscapes, and if multiple landscapes are considered, how are the landscapes integrated. I think that there could be a possibility to see some form of land sparing / land sharing or land use intensification.

There may be a need for minor editing, as some of the sentences are strangly constructed. I find the first sentence on the second paragraph odd, a single word followed by a comma without any 'and'.
DISCUSSION:
I think that this has the potential to be a very interesting presentation.

- - -
INTRO:
This study uses global wood demand projections following different shared socio-economic pathways and climate scenarios to define landscape level wood demand. These landscape level wood demand estimates form the basis for further analysis of the effecst of changes in the global wood demand on various ecosystem services and biodiversity at the local scale.
MERITS:
The merit of this study is that it links global wood demand projections with local biodiversity and ecosystem service impact assessment. As the authors write the demand wood products is defined in the global market but the biodiversity impacts and possible trade-offs occur at the landscape or local scale. Therefore, multilevel analyses are needed, and this is exactly what the authors do in this study.
CRITIQUE:
As this an abstract for a conference session, I see no larger problems with this manuscript. The text would benefit from some rewriting. I think that the objectives and the results (or possible results) are a bit ambiguously written. Consequently, I am not entirely sure if the authors would like to present the results of the downscaling approach (global demand and PEM) or already the possible implications of this downscaling process i.e. "local impacts of changes in global wood demand on various ecosystem services and biodiversity"
DISCUSSION:
I would be glad to hear more about the study at the conference. I think this study could be a nice example of multilevel modelling work, and interesting to a wide audience.

Accounting for global drivers in landscape-level assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services

Date:2018/06/13

Time:14:45

Room:A2 Wivi

Accounting for global drivers in landscape-level assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services

(Oral)

SEE PEER REVIEW

SEE PEER REVIEW

Date:
2018/06/13

Time:
14:45

Room:
A2 Wivi