Rebuilding green infrastructure in boreal production forest given future global wood demand

Global policy for future biodiversity conservation is ultimately
implemented at landscape and local scales. In parallel, green
infrastructure (GI) planning needs to account for socio-economic dynamics
at national and global scales. Progress towards policy goals must, in
turn, be evaluated at the landscape scale. Evaluation tools are often
environmental quality objectives (EQO) indicators. We present three
management scenarios for a 100,000 hectare boreal forest landscape in
Sweden in the coming 100 years. The scenarios optimize financial returns
and account for downscaled projected global demand of wood given a
middle-of-the road Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP2). We contrast a
reference scenario meeting the wood demand against an economy scenario
with no upper harvest limit, and a green infrastructure (GI) scenario
optimizing the levels of four EQO indicators (the area of old forest, the
area of mature broadleaf-rich forest, the amount of deadwood and the
density of large trees). EQO indicators generally reached the highest
levels in the GI scenario and the lowest levels in the economy scenario.
Most indicators increased further in set-asides. The financial profit was
14% lower in the GI and 2% higher in the economy than in the reference
scenario. These scenarios were used in the associated publication to
evaluate the future response of eleven model species from three different
species groups with widely differing habitat requirements. The studied
species were four bird species, six wood-decaying fungi and one lichen,
all either of conservation concern or considered indicator species for
forest of high conservation value. Models and data for the birds and fungi
have been published previously. The model for the lichen Lobaria
pulmonaria was created for this study; the underlying data is therefore
presented here as well. Our study has shown that effects of global SSPs
can be downscaled and accounted for in planning landscape-scale forest and
conservation management. Accounting for EQO indicators in the management
optimization was found to be an effective approach to reveal scenarios for
reaching targets on both revenue and conservation. Rebuilding green
infrastructure in the production forest is possible at a relatively minor
economic cost and to the benefit of species of conservation concern.