MSc Jani Hohti will present his doctoral research.
TITLE: Forest Conservation and Management in Finland – Towards Systematic Planning
ABSTRACT: Biodiversity is declining in Finnish forests, where forestry and land use changes cause habitats loss and degradation. Forest biodiversity can be secured by improving the quality and coverage of conservation area network or through improved condition of the general forest landscape, for example via multifunctional forest management objective. In Finland, the conservation of private land is implemented through a voluntary conservation program called METSO. The cost-efficiency of voluntary conservation can be restricted, as all the most valuable sites might not be offered for conservation or administrative borders might restrict the site selection. This thesis aims to support practical conservation management in Finland by evaluating the cost-efficiency of METSO conservation through conservation prioritization. Nature values of the existing METSO network were compared against artificial random and optimal conservation area networks, and against obligatory conservation networks that may contain sites obtained via expropriations of land. In addition, the ability of spatial conservation prioritization to locate potential METSO sites was tested. Lastly, the effect of harvest intensity and forest management objective on forest multifunctionality was investigated with forest growth simulations. In general, the thesis highlights the benefits of systematic evidence-based conservation actions.
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