Can extended rotations promote the reconciliation of multiple management goals set for production forests in Nordic countries?

Abstract

We studied the ability of extended rotations as a measure to promote sustainable management of production forests in Nordic countries. We carried out scenario analyses for three large forest regions in Southern Finland, Central Sweden, and South-Eastern Norway, where forestry has a high socioeconomic value. We analyzed the effects on wood production, carbon sequestration, and the amount of produced deadwood over the 50 years. In the reference scenario (BAU), the prevailing management of production forests was applied. In the scenario for extended rotations (EXT), rotation lengths were extended by 30 years, on average. We used data from national forest inventories to represent the current stage of the regions’ forests and produced future forecasts using local models, which have been widely applied in large-scale analyses. The increase in carbon sequestration and production of deadwood in production forests can be achieved by lengthening rotations but only at the expense of harvesting removals. The increase in annual carbon sequestration is between 0.7 and 1.6 Mg CO2 eq ha−1. Natural mortality increases by 20–30% along with the amount of deadwood by 0.15 m3 ha−1 a−1, on average. The decrease in the mean annual harvesting removals varies from 0.4 to 1.6 m3 ha−1 a−1 from region to region.