Jyrki Kangas

University of Eastern Finland | UEF · School of Forest Sciences

Using bibliometric methods, this report analysed the volumes of global forest research and research collaboration between researchers, institutes and countries during the period 2010-2019. The keywords used in the bibliometric search resulted in a good match with the publication lists of three major Finnish forest research organisations. The final...

In order to realise Agenda 2030, or the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and the Paris Climate Agreement, the business-as-usual model––the policies, production and consumption habits we have been following thus far––will not work. Instead, it is necessary to change the existing economic model and how we advance societal well-being. He...

Along with the evidence and analyses expounded on in this book, this chapter provides conclusions and suggestions concerning policy implications. These are based on a perspective that calls attention to the need for a holistic approach to look at the nexus of forests, the bioeconomy and climate change. Moreover, it is emphasised that, given the dif...

Finland is the most forested country in the EU – forests cover 74–86% of the land area, depending on the definition and source. Increasing carbon sequestration from the atmosphere, and by storing it in forests (trees and soil) will be one important part of the Finnish climate smart forestry strategy. However, just maximizing the carbon storage of f...

Climate change, global population growth, declining natural resources and the loss of biodiversity challenge us to move towards a global bioeconomy, based on the sustainable utilisation of renewable natural resources in the production of energy, products and services. The linear economic model based on fossil raw materials and products is coming to...

The circular bioeconomy represents a societal paradigm shift and transition challenge that inevitably influences how companies act in their evolving operational environment. The disruptive features may be particularly difficult to foresee and tackle strategically in companies with long-term operations and a relatively stable marketplace position, s...

This study evaluated the suitability of different airborne laser scanning (ALS) datasets for the prediction of forest canopy fuel parameters in managed boreal forests in Finland. The ALS data alternatives were leaf-off and leaf-on unispectral and leaf-on multispectral data, alone and combined with aerial images. Canopy fuel weight, canopy base heig...

Going green in consumption is gaining momentum globally, but little is known how national cultural values and consumers' ethical ideologies explain green consumption. With a culturally rich sample of 1929 responses from consumers in Finland, Germany, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, the present study examines how cultural long-term orientation and...

The main aim of this study is to propose applicable and easily adopted statistical analyses to restructure a sound multilevel decision hierarchy, which reflects decision makers' priorities, achieves a good balance between completeness and conciseness, and takes unconsciously intercorrelated subcriteria into account. A forest planning case was used...

Research Highlights: The majority of non-conformities (NCs) occurred under environmental impact (Principle 6) in all regions, and contributed on average to 40% and 48% of the total number of minor and major NCs respectively. Background and Objectives: The performance of certified companies operating has been frequently criticized in Russia. The aim...

Creating common ground among research groups is a prerequisite for scientifically sound case study research, especially in multi-national and multi-disciplinary research projects. Therefore, this paper proposes a new procedure for case study selection: stochastic cognitive mapping (sCM). sCM complements the previously illustrated conceptual content...

We studied how the use of certain tree species in forest regeneration affected the volume growth, timber yield, and carbon stock of boreal forests in Finland under the current climate (1981–2010) and recent-generation global climate model (GCM) predictions (i.e., multi-model means and individual GCMs of CMIP5), using the representative concentratio...

Biomass as a renewable energy source is an alternative to fossil fuels. Due to its lower energy density compared to fossil fuels, different ways of converting biomass into an energy-dense fuel are sought after. Fast pyrolysis of biomass into pyrolysis oil represents such method, allowing wider substitution of fossil fuels. Pyrolysis is an energy-in...

Increasing role of services is often described as the increased share of services sector employment and value added in economy, although research on services addresses also the multiple ways how services are embedded in socio-economic processes and innovation. Integration of products and services is perceived with potential to improve efficiency in...

The sustainable use of renewable resources has become an important issue worldwide in the move towards a less fossil-fuel-intensive future. Mainstream method for fulfilling this aim is to increase the share of renewable energy and materials to substitute fossil fuels and to become fully independent from fossil fuels over the long-term. However, the...

We employed simulations by forest ecosystem (SIMA) and mechanistic wind damage (HWIND) models in upland boreal forests throughout Finland to study regional risks of wind damage under changing management preferences and climates (current and RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios) over 2010–2099. We used a critical wind speed for the uprooting of trees as a me...

We used national scenario analyses to examine the effects of harvesting intensity on the development of forest resources, timber supply, carbon balance, and biodiversity indicators of Finnish forestry in nine 10-year simulation periods (90-year simulation period) under the current climate. Data from the 11th National Forest Inventory of Finland wer...

The growing forest bioeconomy calls for enhancing wood production in Finland. Accordingly, we studied phenotypic differences and correlations for growth and wood density traits in 25 Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) genotypes grown in a field trial established in the 1970s in southeastern Finland. We also studied the effect of the geographic...

The aims of this study were two-fold: to provide decision aid for a practical bioeconomy research, development and innovation (RDI) and education challenge, and to elaborate hybrid strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) methodologies for providing tangible suggestions as to strategic choices to alleviate the challenge. Scientifically,...

The idea in using Multiple Criteria Decision Support (MCDS) and voting methods within a SWOTframework is to evaluate systematically the SWOT factors, and to assess them with respect to theirpriorities. The MCDS method applied initially, and most often, with SWOT has been the AnalyticHierarchy Process (AHP), and the hybrid AHP-SWOT approach has been...

This paper presents the results of integrated SWOT analysis and Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) model, employed for defining the development of resort Stara Planina in Eastern Serbia and which was based on final report of previous expert study for this touristic destination. In accordance to defined SWOT factors and sub-factors six resultin...

Decision support tools are often criticised from the point of view that people are typically not maximising their utility as normative decision theory expects but rather following rules. We discuss the approaches that describe decision analysis from the behavioural point of view and emphasise that while people without aid do not necessarily maximis...

For many participatory planning cases, the use of voting methods may be an effective approach. Voting methods have long traditions in making social choices – the main difference between group multi-criteria analysis and voting typically is that in voting the judgments are carried out holistically, without decomposing the problem to criteria. Becaus...

Most of the applications dealing with linear programming use deterministic programming. Stochastic programming is, however, a more realistic way of formulating forest management planning problems, and it produces solutions that have a better expected value than the deterministic solutions. In this chapter, we present the linear and goal programming...

All forest-related decisions include uncertainty. Uncertainty can be from several different sources like inventory data, growth and yield models, prices of timber or carbon, costs of operations and preferences of the forest owners. The uncertainties can be described in different ways, using a stochastic approach or a fuzzy approach, for instance. M...

The use of public participation has become common in many forest management planning situations. In this chapter, we define the concepts of participatory planning and group decision-making, as well as stakeholder and decision-maker. We describe the purposes and potential benefits of participatory planning, for the participating stakeholders and for...

In this chapter, we describe planning process examples suitable for public participation in different scales, from managing the forests of one city park to preparing of national forest programmes. We also discuss the decision support methods and tools required for handling a participatory planning process. Planning problems with several decision-ma...

Linear programming is the most widely utilised optimisation method in forestry. Linear programming can be used to deal with many sustainability issues, such as the requirement of even flow of timber over time. It can also be used to deal with multiple goals, by using a constraint approach and Pareto front or by using a goal programming approach. In...

The essential part of multi-criteria decision analysis is structuring a value tree (or a decision hierarchy). Important in this phase is to find the relevant set of criteria and their potential sub-criteria. In this chapter, a definition for such a good set of criteria is provided. It is also important to design good decision alternatives. Therefor...

In this chapter, we discuss the overall selection of decision support tools and usefulness of decision support tools in general. First, we acknowledge the varying suitability of different methods for different purposes. After that, we discuss the possibilities of combining different decision support tools to improve the decision process and outcome...

Single-goal problems are the simplest class of decision problems. In this chapter, utility function and value function concepts are presented for the single-goal case, as well as the differences between these two approaches. We describe how normalisation of forest information can also be interpreted as a value function. We describe the concept of u...

Forest management planning is a rather unique planning situation. In this chapter, we describe the special features of forest planning. Forest owners and managers need to take decisions which can deal with a variety of spatial and temporal scales, from one stand and short time period up to the national level and very long time horizons. Forest mana...

Many forest management planning problems include characteristics that make them hard to be solved by the use of linear programming-based methods. For example, management planning problems that involve spatial aspects commonly require the use of heuristics. The number of heuristic algorithms designed for solving such problems has been rapidly increa...

The decision support methods most often used in timber-harvesting planning are based on a single criterion. In this study, a voting-theory-based method called multicriteria approval (MA) is introduced to the group decision support of timber-harvesting. The use of voting methods alleviates the problems caused by the multitude of decision objectives...

Connecting Multiple Criteria Decision Support (MCDS) methods with SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis yields analytical priorities for the SWOT factors and makes them commensurable. Decision alternatives can also be evaluated with respect to each SWOT factor. SWOT analysis provides the basic frame for analyses of operat...

Several multi-criteria decision support methods have been introduced to sustainable management of natural resources, but different methods suit different planning situations. One way to support decision-making is to apply voting theory. In this study, a multi-criteria decision-support method based on voting theory, called multicriteria approval (MA...

Multicriteria decision support systems are applied in natural resource management in order to clarify the planning process for the stakeholders, to make all available information usable and all objectives manageable. Especially when the public is involved in planning, the decision support system should be easy to comprehend, transparent and fair. S...

Voting methods were used by Metsähallitus in a real strategic participatory planning case in a regional working group context. The general aim of the study was to find out whether learning and collaborative decision making could be adequately supported by using the voting methods in the regional stakeholder group. Approval voting (AV) was used to s...

The goal of Kangas, Kangas and Kurttila's Decision Support for Forest Management is to provide students and researchers with a toolbox of methods for approaching the different planning situations that may arise in practice. It draws together a wide range of methods used in planning forest management regimes and presents a systematic overview of cur...

The basic task of social choice is to combine individual preferences into a collective choice. When individual utility functions are combined, the aggregation could be interpreted as a social welfare function (Martin et al. 1996). Social welfare can be interpreted to include monetary terms such as commodity consumption as well as other values such...

“A heuristic is a technique which seeks good (i.e. near-optimal) solutions at a reasonable computational cost without being able to guarantee either feasibility or optimality, or even in many cases to state how close to optimality a particular feasible solution is” (Reeves 1993). In the context of forest planning, the used heuristic techniques iter...

The examples given so far in this book are simple examples in the sense that in each case one MCDS tool is applied for a well-defined setting. In real life, using MCDS tools is not that simple. The whole planning process involves several phases, from creating the alternatives among which the recommendation is selected to selecting the possible part...

If the state of nature that will actually occur and the consequences associated with the decision alternatives are known, a decision is made under certainty. Under risk and uncertainty, the state of nature that would prevail is not known with certainty. Under risk, the probability of each state of nature occurring and, correspondingly, the probabil...

Environmental problems are typically messy and complex. There may be high risks involved and/or lack of scientific agreement on the cause of problems. The problems may be ill defined, and the goals may not be clear. In addition, numerous decision makers or other stakeholders are often involved in environmental planning. The stakeholders are defined...

The basis for decision making is that given two objects, say A and B, people can meaningfully say whether they prefer A to B, B to A or whether they are indifferent (von Winterfeldt and Edwards 1986). Usually, it is assumed that people can also state the strength of this preference. The strength could be expressed either in ordinal terms, or in car...

Linear Programming (LP) is the most common optimization method used in forest management planning (e.g. Davis et al. 2001; Buongiorno and Gilles 2003). The idea in LP is to allocate the limited resources optimally. In LP method the planning problem is described with an objective function which is to be maximized (or minimized) Any solution that sat...

Planning situations and planning needs vary greatly case by case. Acquiring decision support for tactical planning is different from acquiring it for strategic planning; for non-industrial private forest planning compared to public or industrial forestry; for an individual decision maker compared to a consortium; for planning solely for wood produc...

Criteria used to measure ecological or social sustainability of forestry often include qualitative ones. Fuzzy additive weighting has been proposed for using qualitative data in the form of linguistic variables. It is, however, possible to formulate a linguistic problem also using statistical distributions. We compared the fuzzy and statistical app...

Uncertainty included in forest variables is normally ignored in forest management planning. When the uncertainty is accounted for, it is typically assumed to be independently distributed for the criteria measurements of different alternatives. In forest management planning, the factors introducing the uncertainty can be classified into three main s...

This article studies alternative possibilities to incorporate uncertainty and risk attitude into multicriteria forest planning calculations. The interest is in studying the uncertainties involved in forest owner's subjective preferences, but the presented approach could be applied also more generally with measurement and modeling errors concerning...

Many different multicriteria decision aid methods have been used in forestry decision support. When opinions of the general public are considered, methods that are simple to understand and easy to use are required. One such method is multicriteria approval (MA). It is based on approval voting, where the voters have been replaced by criteria. In MA,...

The strategic planning of a forest research organization is based on anticipating the changes in the operational environment of the entire forest cluster and in the organization itself. Scanning operational environment to attain a systematic approach and support for a decision situation can be carried out by applying a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opport...

Important decisions of mankind have for centuries been made using voting techniques, both in small groups and in nationwide elections. Currently, involvement of public in forestry decision making is seen as an important part of sustainable forest management, both as a means to an end and as an end in itself. In public participatory processes, issue...

In forest management planning and forestry decision-making there is a continuous need for higher quality information on forest resources. The aim of this study was to improve the quality of forest resource information acquired by airborne laser scanning by combining it with aerial images and current stand-register data. A k-MSN (most similar neighb...

The supply of Internet-based forest planning services to non-industrial private forest owners has increased. At the core of these services there is usually the "paper forest plan" in browseable format. The options to update the stand-level data and to download, fill and send various forms related to stand treatments are further characteristics of t...

The traditional assumption with multi-criteria natural resource management models is that the values of the decision alternatives with respect to one criterion can be assessed independently of the values of the decision alternatives with respect to other criteria. In practice, however, the assumption of independent decision criteria is not always r...

Modern forestry increasingly often requires consideration of ecological objectives in planning calculations. A common problem in the integration of ecological objectives with forest planning is the lack of empirical models usable when evaluating the ecological merits of alternative forest treatment schedules. With respect to the habitat requirement...

In multi-criteria decision analysis, the overall performance of decision alternatives is evaluated with respect to several, generally conflicting decision criteria. One approach to perform the multi-criteria decision analysis is to use ratio-scale pairwise comparisons concerning the performance of decision alternatives and the importance of decisio...

In the socioecological landscape planning of natural resource management, sociocultural and ecological decision criteria are integrated with ‘traditional’ economic considerations in an analytic and systemic way. As the main phases, the approach involves (1) pinpointing the sites of foremost importance from the viewpoint of ecological and sociocultu...

We discuss the benefits of using multiple criteria decision support (MCDS) methods in forest management, briefly present some MCDS methods recently applied in forestry, and summarize experiences gained from MCDS applications in forestry. Applications of MCDS methods of varying characteristics can be found in the management planning of multiple-purp...

In multi-criteria decision making, one approach to utilise mixed data consisting of both ordinal and ratio scale information is to consider ratio scale random samples fulfilling the existing ordinal data. However, some of the distributional assumptions proposed in the literature for the phase of transforming the ordinal data into ratio scale may le...

Strategic planning which focuses on rural tourism is based fundamentally on the adjusting to changes in the operational environment. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis is a commonly used tool for analysing both the internal and external environments in order to attain a systematic approach and support for a decision si...

Uncertainty is an important issue in the support of any forestry decision. Forestry decision making today typically involves objectives and information concerning ecological, economic and social issues. The consequences of alternative forest management programmes might be hard to assess, and predictions and assessments always include uncertainty. F...

Multi-criteria forest ecosystem management considers the overall evaluation of alternative management plans with respect to objectives, which typically deal with both ecological and economic issues. One approach is to make the evaluations quantitatively so that analyses based on trade-offs between decision criteria can be carried out. This requires...

Connecting Multiple Criteria Decision Support (MCDS) methods with SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis yields analytical priorities for the factors included in SWOT analysis and makes them commensurable. In addition, decision alternatives can be evaluated with respect to each SWOT factor. In this way, SWOT analysis prov...

Multicriteria decision analysis is applied to ecosystem management planning in a forest landscape. Ten alternative action plans were evaluated employing five criteria. For some criteria, cardinal measures with their associated uncertainties were obtained. For other criteria, only ordinal (ranking) information was available. The Stochastic Multicrit...

The aim of the study was to demonstrate the use of nonparametric methods in estimating tree-level growth models. In the nonparametric methods the growth of a tree is predicted as a weighted mean of the values of neighboring observations. The selection of the nearest neighbors is based on the similarities between tree- and stand-level characteristic...

The widespread availability of Internet connections and the everyday aspect of the use of data networks provide many opportunities also for exploiting in planning and decision-making processes. The Internet can serve as a fast two-way channel of information. The possibility to use direct democracy via data networks so that the communication is inte...

Multicriteria approval (MA) and stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis with ordinal criteria (SMAA-O) methods have been specially developed for making use of low-quality information in multicriteria decision support. In this study, MA and SMAA-O are applied to forestry decision support with both ordinal and cardinal criteria. On grounds of...

Voting theory has a lot in common with utility theory, and especially with group decision-making. An expected-utility-maximising strategy exists in voting situations, as well as in decision-making situations. Therefore, it is natural to utilise the achievements of voting theory also in group decision-making. Most voting systems are based on a singl...

In forest management and other land-use planning, ecological, social, and economical demands often conflict. Forest planning in particular has been biased towards maximizing economic output while disregarding the ecological effects of forestry practices. In this paper we present an approach for taking biological diversity into account in strategic...

The forests in Finland have been under intensive planning for decades. Currently, mathematical programming is widely used in planning of wood production. Today's multi‐functional forestry, however, calls for more flexible decision support methods. MCDM tools have been used in responding to fresh planning challenges. For example, the Finnish Forest...

Nowadays, forests are often managed for multiple uses. Forests are expected to produce reasonable incomes while at the same time promoting nature conservation and amenity values. There are also other characteristics that make natural resources decisionmaking situations complex. For example, group decision making and public participation are often r...

We examined a hybrid method, referred to here as the A'WOT [Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in SWOT analysis], for improving the usability of SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis. A commonly used decision analysis method, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and its eigenvalue calculation framework are integrated with...

GIS data processing and spatial analysis, together with modern decision analysis techniques, were used in this study to improve habitat suitability evaluation over large areas. Both empirical evaluation models and models based on expert knowledge can be applied in this approach. The habitat requirements of species were described as map layers withi...

The study presents four ways to formulate a landscape level forest planning model for group planning using a heuristic optimization method called ‘HERO’. The HERO method is composed of two primary steps: first, forest management goals are defined; then a management plan is sought to fulfill the defined goals. The planning models consider the landsc...

Kangas, J. 2001. Modelling future timber price development by using expert judgments and time series analysis. Silva Fennica 35(1): 93–102. Timber prices belong to the most important variables affecting the optimality of forest management. On the other hand, forecasting of timber prices is very uncertain. One difficulty when using past time series...

Pykäläinen, J. 2001. Outranking methods as tools in strategic natural resources planning. Silva Fennica 35(2): 215–227. Two outranking methods, ELECTRE III and PROMETHEE II, commonly used as decision-aid in various environmental problems, and their applications to decision support for natural resources management are presented. These methods repres...

This study illustrates planning approaches available for forest planning concerning multiple private ownership, referred to here as regional planning. These approaches are necessary because of ecological reasons: evaluating the habitat quality of several species requires examining the forest landscape within areas larger than a single forest holdin...

Sironen, S., Kangas, A., Maltamo, M. & Kangas, J. 2001. Estimating individual tree growth with the k-nearest neighbour and k-Most Similar Neighbour methods. Silva Fennica 35(4): 453-467. The purpose of this study was to examine the use of non-parametric methods in estimating tree level growth models. In non-parametric methods the growth of a tree i...

The present study examines a hybrid method for improving the usability of SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis. A commonly used decision analysis method, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and its eigenvalue calculation framework are integrated with SWOT analysis. AHP's connection to SWOT, called here hybrid method A'...