Ljusk Ola Eriksson

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences | SLU · Department of Forest Resource Management

This qualitative study aimed to map what information is used in the forest planning process at large forest-owning companies, how it is used, its level of uncertainty and currently employed strategies to handle forest information uncertainty. An additional aim was to assess the status of the paradigm of the forest planning hierarchy in forestry. We...

The analysis of forest management strategies at landscape and regional levels forms a vital part of finding viable directions that will satisfy the many services expected of forests. This article describes the structure and content of a stand simulator, GAYA, which has been adapted to Swedish conditions. The main advantage of the GAYA implementatio...

Precision forestry allows decision-making on tree level or pixel level, as compared to stand-level data. However, little is known about the importance of precision in thinning decisions and its long-term effects on within-stand variation, stand economy and growth. In this study, silviculture was optimized for Net Present Value (NPV) in 20 conifer-d...

Europe's forests provide vital habitat for biodiversity and essential ecosystem services whose provision must be sustained or enhanced over the coming century. However, the potential to secure or increase forest ecosystem services, while securing the habitat requirements of taxa remains unclear, especially within the context of uncertain climate an...

I den strategiska skogliga planeringen utarbetas långsiktiga strategier för nyttjandet av skogsresursen, vilket kan inkludera hur avverkningspotentialen ska nyttjas över tid, val av föryngringsträdslag, samt inriktningen för miljö- och naturvård. Med andra ord så lägger strategisk planering grunden till ett hållbart brukande av skogen. Vid många av...

In this study we developed a generic cost-effective approach for spatially explicit decision support involving the allocation of road repair treatments. The approach begins with an assessment of the existing road condition to identify the extent of environmental impacts and to determine road repair regimes in a subjective manner using group-decisio...

Research Highlights: Long-term global scenarios give insights on how social and economic developments and international agreements may impact land use, trade, product markets, and carbon balances. They form a valuable basis for forming national forest policies. Many aspects related to long-term management of forests and consequences for biodiversit...

This study investigates the need for change of current forest management approaches in a southern Swedish region within the context of future climate change mitigation through empirically derived projections, rather than forest management according to silvicultural guidelines. Scenarios indicate that climate change mitigation will increase global w...

Sustainable forest management is driving the development of forest decision support systems (DSSs) to include models and methods concerned with climate change, biodiversity and various ecosystem services (ESs). The future development of forest landscapes is very much dependent on how forest owners act and what goes on in the wider world; thus, mode...

Aim of study: To examine methods of incorporating risk and uncertainty to stand level forest decisions. Area of study: A case study examines a small forest holding from Jönköping, Sweden. Material and methods: We incorporate empirically estimated uncertainty into the simulation through a Monte Carlo approach when simulating the forest stands for...

In this paper, we develop an interdisciplinary agent-based framework for studying the provision of forest ecosystem goods and services (ES) at the landscape level. It combines forest owner types and their behavioral models with forest decision support systems (DSS). For this, we draw on mainstream decision-making theories in social sciences and rel...

For forest sustainability and vulnerability assessment, the landscape scale is considered to be more and more relevant as the stand level approaches its known limitations. This review, which describes the main forest landscape simulation tools used in the 20 European case studies of the European project " Future-oriented integrated management of Eu...

Interactions between value-creating activities are vital to increasing product value. Information sharing is a cornerstone of such interactions. For a forest owning company with the primary objective to be leading in selling roundwood to forest industries, it appears therefore crucial that the sales people within a forest company have up-to-date kn...

Sustainable forest management (SFM) has been broadly established as a policy objective in European and national forest policy and laws. However, for forest policy-makers, owners, managers, and stakeholder groups across Europe, one key challenge for implementing SFM in practice remains the integration of different forest-related policy objectives an...

Reindeer husbandry and commercial forestry seek to co-exist in the forests of Northern Sweden. As interwoven as the two industries are, conflicts have arisen. Forest practices have reduced the distribution of lichen, the main winter diet for reindeer. Forest practices have also increased forest density, compromising the animals’ ability to pass thr...

From 2009 to 2013, a group of more than 100 researchers from 26 countries, under a COST-Action project named FORSYS, worked on a review of the use of forest management decision support systems (FMDSS). Guided by a template, local researchers conducted assessments of FMDSS use in their countries; their results were documented in Country Reports. In...

Northern Swedish forests provide multiple ecosystem services. Integrating these values into the forest planning process frequently requires that not only forest owners but also other stakeholders be involved. The objective of this study is to assess the potential of future scenario development as a tool in forest planning. In a case study of the Vi...

The Special Issue Providing Ecosystem Services under Climate Change: Community of Practice of Forest Decision Support Systems is based on the presentations given at the 24th World Congress of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations and provides an overview on Forest Management Decision Support Systems currently designed and applied...

While sustainable forestry in Europe is characterized by the provision of a multitude of forest ecosystem services, there exists no comprehensive study that scrutinizes their sensitivity to forest management on a pan-European scale, so far. We compile scenario runs from regionally tailored forest growth models and Decision Support Systems (DSS) fro...

Habitat fragmentation is a key biodiversity issue in forest planning at the landscape level. More consideration is needed in assessing the choice of the landscape index in spatial forest planning optimizations. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of four different landscape indices on the fragmentation when applied to forest pla...

In this chapter we discuss current challenges to the development of Decision Support Systems (DSS) that may increase the efficiency and the effectiveness of industrial forests management scheduling. We highlight the need for automation of industrial forest strategic, tactical and operational management planning processes within DSS – computerized t...

Since forest planning is characterized by long time horizons and it typically involves large areas of land and numerous stakeholders, uncertainty and risk should be taken into account when developing forest management plans. There are many sources of uncertainty and risk, e.g. regarding the future states of nature, future market conditions, occurre...

Semantic wikis support collaboratively editing, categorising, interlinking and retrieving web pages for a group of experts working in a certain domain. The use of semantic technologies allows the expression of wiki content in a more structured way, which increases its potential use. This contribution presents an overview of the development process...

The forest planning system of large Swedish forest owners follows a three step procedure: long-term, medium-term, and short-term planning. The system is sequential and hierarchical in the sense that longer-term plans form the framework for shorter-term plans, and that top-level management prepares the long range plans and the lower management level...

In northern Sweden, the forests are used simultaneously for both timber production and reindeer husbandry. During the winter months, lichen is the most important fodder for reindeer. Forest management operations are generally considered having a negative impact on reindeer husbandry as harvesting and dense stands remove or obscure the ground lichen...

In order to share information on the development and use of forest management decision support systems (FMDSS), a European-initiated network has established a wiki website as part of its activities. Case studies and associated lessons learned were solicited from the network using semantic structures built on the wiki. A total of 31 cases from 10 di...

The development of non-wood forest products and services has been put forward as a means for business diversification and development of rural areas. However, the well-documented male dominance in traditional family farm forestry (FFF) is considered to restrain women's involvement in forestry activities, and thus hamper new enterprising businesses....

Forest-owning companies in Sweden have both a goal to yield a good short-term rate of return on their forest and a goal to maintain a high long-term rate of return by maintaining the production of wood-based products. Both these objectives are taken into account in the forest planning process. For the long-term goal, the companies develop strategie...

Decision making in forest planning often involves situations, where the value of the stand is dependent on its location or the properties of the stands nearby. Often the most intuitive tool to describe spatial objectives and outcomes is a visual map. However, evaluating and comparing different maps may prove a considerable cognitive burden, especia...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impacts of forest-based activities on the conditions of the Ganaveh woodland in the southern Zagros, Iran, and to suggest strategies for improving the implementation of forest resource management plans. Woodland inventory data was gathered in 2003, accompanied with data from interviews in 2008, were...

2012. Forest planning in a Swedish company – a knowledge management analysis of forest information. Silva Fennica 46(5): 717–731. Forest data and forest information are central to forest management planning. The knowledge a large forest-owning company possesses about its forests could potentially be a strategic capability. In this study, the forest...

Cost-plus-loss analysis of data for forestry planning has often been carried out for highly simplified planning situations. In this study, we suggest an advance in the cost-plus-loss methodology that aims to capture the hierarchical structure and iterative nature of planning by the large forest owner. The simulation system that is developed to simu...

This study deals with the problem of including the risk of wind damage in long-term forestry management. A model based on Graph-Based Markov Decision Processes (GMDP) is suggested for development of silvicultural management policies. The model can both take stochastic wind events into account and be applied to forest estates containing a large numb...

Mathematical programming and computers have been used for several decades to solve complex and long term forest management planning problems. The ever increasing demand on the forest ecosystem to produce wood and other goods and services poses a corresponding demand on a forest decision support system. As a response to meet new requirements the dev...

Forest planning in Sweden today translates not only into planning of timber production, but also for the provision of other functions and services. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods provide a way to take also non-monetary values into account in planning. The purpose of this study was to gain experience on how to use a forest decision...

A key aspect when optimizing strategic and long-term forest management policies is the temporal aggregation utilizing time periods of a specific length. As the length of the time periods influence both the problem size and the possible interaction of the management policy with the state of the forest, it implicitly has a major influence on the feas...

Climate change is expected to have substantial effects on many aspects of forest ecosystems, including timber production. Temperatures in northern Europe are expected to increase considerably, although there is substantial uncertainty about both the seasonal and average changes that will occur. In Scandinavia, production is predicted to increase ac...

Forest management in Sweden today, as in many other places, involves the management of multiple resources for diverse purposes, such as promoting biodiversity, recreation, hunting, carbon sequestration, and reindeer herding as well as wood production. Sustainability is no longer related only to timber production; it now embraces the composition, pr...

Using wood as a building material affects the carbon balance through several mechanisms. This paper describes a modelling approach that integrates a wood product substitution model, a global partial equilibrium model, a regional forest model and a stand-level model. Three different scenarios were compared with a business-as-usual scenario over a 23...

K. 2011. Multiple criteria decision analysis with consideration to place-specific values in participatory forest planning. Silva Fennica 45(2): 253–265. The combination of multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and participatory planning is an approach that has been applied in complex planning situations where multiple criteria of very differen...

Forest planning in a participatory context often involves multiple stakeholders with conflicting interests. A promising approach for handling these complex situations is to integrate participatory planning and multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA). The objective of this paper is to analyze strengths and weaknesses of such an integrated approac...

This study aims to investigate the relationships between people's livelihoods and the woodland resources of the Ganaveh watershed in southern Zagros, Iran, as a basis for suggestions of strategies for sustainable management of the woodland resources and improvement of the livelihoods of people in the community. Household data were collected through...

This study aims to present a diameter class model to predict the effects of different forest management practices on growth and yield conditions of the mixed coppice stands of Persian oak (Quercus persica) in the semiarid forests in southern Zagros, Iran. Using inventory data the model was applied to make management recommendations for a forested w...

This study aims to present a diameter class model to predict the effects of different forest management practices on growth and yield conditions of the mixed coppice stands of Persian oak (Quercus persica) in the semiarid forests in southern Zagros, Iran. Using inventory data the model was applied to make management recommendations for a forested w...

The study presents a new approach for aggregating stands for harvest in strategic forest planning. In fragmented landscapes this could benefit nature conservation as well as reduce costs. The approach is built on the idea of minimizing the outside perimeter of contiguous harvest areas. The formulation allows for the use of exact solution methods su...

A promising approach for participatory forest management planning is the combination of multiple-criteria decision-making and group decision making. A crucial part of the participatory multiple-criteria decision-making process is the aggregation of individual stakeholder preferences into a collective preference. In this study, an approach based on...

Traditionally, the main focus of forest management planning has been the production of timber. However, forests are today regarded as a source for a wide range of commodities and services, such as biodiversity and recreation to name a few. This results in planning situations that often involve several stakeholders or social groups where a multiplic...

A number of measures have been introduced into Swedish forestry in order to satisfy demands on biodiversity and sustainability. Protection measures include set asides, areas with continuous cover forestry and retention trees on harvesting sites, to name but a few. Most of these practices will have implications for the total wood supply of the Swedi...

Integrated approaches to forest planning lead to large models and there is a subsequent need for a reduction of the number of constraints and variables. One way of achieving this is to aggregate data, either spatially or temporally. In this paper an integrated forest planning mixed integer model that takes into account both long-term strategic and...

When selecting a long-term silvicultural management policy for a forest, a number of stochastic events can be taken into account in order to improve the management of the forest and thereby increase its value. A stochastic event that has recently been given a lot of attention to is the damage to forests due to windstorms. This is an important event...

The forest owner cooperatives in Sweden were established almost a century ago with the aim to improve the private forest owners’ bargaining situation and improve silviculture (the study, cultivation, and management of forest trees). The characteristics of today’s private forest owners and forest industry are changing, something which should enc...

Large-scale long-range forest management problems have been successfully analysed for decades using linear programming models. Existing larger systems, such as MELA, FOLPI, FORPLAN, GAYA-LP and Spectrum, are based on a model formulation that is known as model I or the closely related model II. This paper shows how the model I formulation can be ext...

This paper presents an attempt to extend traditional long range forest planning systems so that adaptive, stochastic problems can be analyzed. The approach is applied to a two-stand three-period sample problem where growth varies with stochastic climate conditions. It is shown that the solution to the problem depends on the cost associated with the...

This paper presents three approaches for including spatial considerations, in terms of continuous areas of old forest, in a long-term forest planning problem with even-flow and inventory constraints. Two of the approaches integrate linear programming with simulated annealing into one single solution procedure. Simulated annealing is used for solvin...

Operational planning is normally based on stands as the primary unit of treatment. In recent years, interest has been directed towards the use of smaller area units such that the formation of treatment units becomes part of the operational planning. Here, the method of genetic algorithms was used in order to delineate harvesting units in a forest d...

A new solution method to solve the even-aged stand management problem that results when biodiversity-related demands are taken into account is presented. The model was based on single-tree growth functions, the meta-heuristic optimisation technique: tabu search and greedy heuristics. The timing of thinnings and final harvest was recognised, and fix...

The core area concept is proposed as a criterion promoting the formation of contiguous areas of old growth over time in the landscape. Core area is defined as the area of old forest, free of edge effects, where the edge effect is a function of the state of the surrounding habitat. The core area measure is evaluated by solving a long-range planning...

Projects in forestry and agriculture aiming at carbon dioxide mitigation are complex. This complexity necessitates that policy makers analyse project proposals from multiple view points. Here, three conceptual projects - fossil fuel substitution by forest fuel, by Salix plantations and sequestration through forest growth - are analysed with respect...

Two methods are presented for solving the stand management problem where the growth dynamics are depicted with a single tree model. With the nongradient method the problem is recast into a combinatorial problem, which in turn is solved with the method of simulated annealing. The gradient method, of which three versions are given, utilizes a combina...

The supplier of wood fuels has a large number of interrelated activities to coordinate on the way from raw material source to consumer. Transports, storing and intermediate processing should be decided on for a number of assortments. Storing is a prominent feature of this network flow problem since consumer demand is high when small amounts of raw...

The effect of terrain factors on productivity in subgrade preparation by excavator was studied. The data, collected in a follow-up time study of 57 road sections, was analyzed using multiple linear regression. A prediction model that has soil moisture class and boulder frequency as independent variables was derived. The results also show that produ...

The assessment of wood supply in long-run forest sector analysis by harvest scheduling approaches entails an assumption of rational behavior among forest owners. The implications of the assumption are investigated by projecting wood supply in southern Sweden under alternate price expectations and with different requirements on the variation in fore...

The supplier of forest fuel has a large number of interrelated activities to coordinate on the way from raw material source to consumer. Transports, storing and intermediate processing must be decided on for a number of different raw materials.In this paper, an analysis is performed on the energy supply system of Jämtlandsbränslen, a subsidiary of...

Medium‐term plans give prescriptions for individual stands in each of three to five years. The long range plan, on the other hand, is based on aggregated data in the form of timber classes, and multi‐year periods. Three treatment indices for stands are developed as linkages between these plans. Several model studies are performed where the prioriti...

A method for forecasting the log‐class distribution resulting from harvesting forest stands is investigated. The diameter distribution of a stand is approximated by a two‐parameter Weibull density function, the parameters of which are recovered from stand level characteristics. Theoretical bucking is performed for actual and simulated distributions...

In this paper a mathematical programming model for long term forest planning is presented. The model uses aggregated data and is intended to be used in analyzing the effects of different strategic decisions. The objectives, which are formulated by headquarters, may be both short term as well as long term ‘goals’ or ‘target’. Some of the objective a...

Decision aids provided to foresters by forest management research are generally based on deterministic models. However, different sources of randomness may affect significantly the decisions to be taken. In this preliminary study, we con-sider the effect of uncertainty on the tree mortality factor for the even-aged stand management problem. This pr...

• Inom forskningsprogrammet Heureka utvecklas habitatmodeller för flera djur- och växtarter. • Habitatmodeller kan användas för att identifiera framtida flaskhalsar i mängd och fördelning av viktiga livsmiljöer för olika arter. • Det behövs verktyg för att ta hänsyn till både virkesproduktion och en viss mängd habitat i landskapet i planeringen....

There is a growing interest in efficient ways to use biomass for the substitution of fossil fuels and non-biomass materials. Wood-based building material can affect the energy and carbon balances through at least four mechanisms: the relatively low fossil energy needed to manufacture wood products compared with alternative materials; the avoidance...