A procedure to rank pre-defined biodiversity hotspots in Finland

The double crises of climate change and declining biodiversity are threatening boreal forests worldwide. We urgently need to effectively allocate resources to have more impactful conservation outcomes. Here, we examine the optimal targeting of carbon storage and deadwood production in forest landscapes. We specifically aim to discover (a) the regional differences in effectiveness and (b) the influence of the timing of targets. We conducted the study in two Finnish regions with pre-defined biodiversity hotspots. For each hotspot, the development of the forests over the next 30 and 50 years, including carbon storage and deadwood, was simulated. Then, mixed-integer linear programming was used to identify trade-offs between economic revenue, carbon storage of living trees, and deadwood volume. The cost-effectiveness varied both between and within regions, with the southern region achieving consistently larger carbon storage and more deadwood with the same loss of revenue. The cost-effectiveness was better in the 50-year time horizon than in 30 years, which was mainly due to the initial forest structure. The results indicate that to allocate conservation resources effectively, we need to consider the existing forest structure and its development, as well as regional differences and the time horizon of the targets.