Regional impacts of increasing forest protection: scenario analysis of wood production, profitability, biodiversity and carbon storage in Southern Finland

Abstract The EU Biodiversity Strategy sets out targets to halt biodiversity loss. In Finland, achieving these goals would require the supplementary conservation (SC) of boreal forests, consequently reducing the area of production forests. Utilising scenario analyses, the large-scale impacts of SC were studied from two perspectives: environmental (deadwood, broadleaves, carbon) and forestry (removals, profitability). Two harvesting strategies were also considered: one in which the decrease in harvesting removals due to SC was compensated, and another without compensation. Circa 1.27 million hectares of forests in southern Finland were included into analyses. Motti simulator was used to produce stand projections for 50 years. The reference scenario, BAU (business-as-usual), represented the current production forest area, whereas in the SC scenarios, area of production forest reduced due to the SC. The SC levels were relative to the 10% regional strict forest protection target suggested by the Finnish Nature Panel. SC100 corresponded to the full required SC area in their suggestion, SC50 to half and SC25 to a quarter. The study revealed that SC increased the broadleaved volume (2–10% compared to BAU) and the accumulation of deadwood (7–29%), across all forests. The carbon storage of the living trees also increased (2–10%), but only without removal compensation. Prioritising older stands in SC resulted in a non-linear dependency between increasing environmental benefits and increasing SC area, leading to considerable differences in trade-offs. Furthermore, the harvesting strategy itself had a decisive impact on trade-offs. SC with removal compensation was distinctively more cost-efficient than without it.