Pros and cons with continuous cover forestry for biodiversity and ecosystem services

The last decades it has become apparent that large clearcuts are threatening biodiversity and hence the functioning of, and the services provided by, nature.

Currently, society is turning its eyes upon alternative forestry systems, such as continuous cover forestry (CCF), to combine forestry and biodiversity conservation, without knowing how this would affect biodiversity and ecosystem services. In addition, we do not know to what extent we could implement them in our forest landscape.

In this project, we have identified three main questions which we aim to answer:  How do two of the main forms of CCF, gap- and selective cutting, affect multi-taxon biodiversity in both short- and medium-term perspective?

How are key ecosystems services, such as berry-, and reindeer fodder production, but also tree growth affected by these suggested forestry systems?

How large areas are suitable for CCF and where in the landscape can they be found?We currently lack the knowledge needed to properly assess the effect of CCF on biodiversity and ecosystem services due to a lack of research infrastructure.

In our project, we will use our exclusive access to three such infrastructures to analyze effects on multi-taxon diversity and ecosystem service of gap and selective cutting across both Sweden and Finland.

Using machine-learning, laser data, and GIS we will also map the area, location and availability of forests suitable for selective cutting.