Petteri Muukkonen

• PhD
• University lecturer at University of Helsinki

In recent years, concern has arisen over the effects of increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) in the earth's atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels. One way to mitigate increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration and climate change is carbon sequestration to forest vegeta-tion through photosynthesis. Comparable regional scale estimates for the carbo...

In boreal forests, some growing sites are more vulnerable to decreased soil moisture than others, which might result in stress symptoms in trees and thus affect their growth. We combined Finnish forest health data (ICP Level 1) with GIS data describing growing conditions, soil properties and soil water conditions to find out ways to identify the mo...

This study describes forest landscape fragmentation and connectivity along the FinnishRussian border near the Karelian Isthmus. The landscape pattern was analysed using classification data based on Landsat ETMand Landsat TM images in combination with systematic surveys in Finland (Finnish National Forest Inventory) (n � 546) and the authors' own fi...

Forest biomass and its change over time have been measured at both local and large scales, an example for the latter being forest greenhouse gas inventories. Currently used methodologies to obtain stock change estimates for large forest areas are mostly based on forest inventory information as well as various factors, referred to as biomass factors...

According to the IPCC GPG (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Good Practice Guidance), remote sensing methods are especially suitable for independent verification of the national LULUCF (Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry) carbon pool estimates, particularly the aboveground biomass. In the present study, we demonstrate the potential of...

Liikunta on välttämätöntä terveyden ylläpitämiselle, ja sillä on lukemattomia positiivisia vaikutuksia sekä fyysiseen että psyykkiseen hyvinvointiin. Liikuntaympäristöjen monipuolisuus lähellä kotia voi edistää liikunnan harrastamista ja fyysisesti aktiivista elämäntapaa. Liikunnallisen elämäntavan mahdollistaminen kaikille, etenkin huono-osaisilla...

Introduction: Finland's natural physical environment and climate support a wide variety of informal outdoor sports, thereby motivating the population to do physical exercise in scenic environments. The vast majority of Finns enjoys outdoor recreational activities, and could thus be encouraged to post accounts of their year-round activities on soci...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been required adaptations in leisure-time physical activity (PA) especially due to restrictive policies concerning indoor sport facilities (ISF). This study investigated the effects of the constraints on ISF among residents of two low socioeconomic status suburbs in Finland. Research questions were: (1) Are...

https://www.lts.fi/media/lts_vertaisarvioidut_tutkimusartikkelit/2023/liikunta-tiede-lehti-5-2023-sivut-78-86-hasanen-ym..pdf Hasanen, E., Salmi, L., Virmasalo, I., Salmikangas, A.-K., Simula, M., Vänttinen, L., Laakso, T. & Muukkonen, P. 2023. Suburban physical activity environments as children and young people’s spaces. Liikunta & Tiede 60 (5),...

While geomedia is a new concept in Finnish curricula, it merely describes geographical methods and data that have always been central in geography education. In this study, we interviewed geography teachers on 1) how they understand the concept of geomedia, 2) what is the role of geomedia in their students’ everyday lives and how that is reflected...

Informal sport is central to Finnish children’s leisure and physical activity time. This paper aims to build a better understanding of the travel time-based accessibility to informal sports facilities, specifically to ice skating fields, for children and adolescents (aged 7–19) in the city of Helsinki. We focused on the winter of 2020–2021 because...

Sport and exercise contribute to health and well-being in cities. While previous research has mainly focused on activities at specific locations such as sport facilities, "in-formal sport" that occur at arbitrary locations across the city have been largely neglected. Such activities are more challenging to observe, but this challenge may be address...

Vastaväittäjä Petteri Muukkosen puhe Eerika Virranmäen väitöstilaisuudessa 4.3.2022. Myös Virranmäen väitöstilaisuuden lektio on luettavissa Alue ja Ympäristö -lehdessä.

Biomass is a key variable for crop monitoring and for assessing carbon stocks and bioenergy potential. This study aimed to develop an allometric model for predicting the dry leaf biomass of sisal, an agave plant with crassulacean acid metabolism grown for fibre production in the tropics and subtropics and whose biomass can be utilised as a feedstoc...

Tutkimme artikkelissamme sitä, miten ajattelun taidon tasot ilmenevät maantieteen ylioppilaskokeen taloudellista kestävää kehitystä käsittelevissä kysymyksissä sekä esseevastauksissa. Kestävään kehitykseen liittyvät ylioppilaskoekysymykset ovat usein vaativia, koska ne ovat tietoa laajasti soveltavia ja niissä yhdistetään useiden maantieteen kurssi...

In this paper, we are showing how we designed and implemented a graduate-level GIS e-learning course for 3D analyses in GIS and geoinformatics. This work was done in the GIS project work course in the Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki. In the developed e-learning course students can study independently on the e-learnin...

Uudessa opetussuunnitelmassa geomedia, eli maantieteellisen tiedon erilaiset hankinta-ja esitystavat, kasvatti osuuttaan sekä peruskoulun että lukiotason maantieteen opetuksessa. Erityisesti lukion opetussuunnitelmassa tuodaan esille geomedia-käsitteen mukainen paikkatieto-opetus sekä paikkatietomenetelmien soveltaminen maantieteellisessä tutkimuks...

Aggregate rock has a constant demand in urban areas as a construction material for infrastructure. To be economically viable, the extraction sites for this resource should be located close to the construction sites, which can be complicated due to conflicting land uses. In this research, rock aggregate resources were modelled for the Pirkanmaa regi...

Open GIS data enables calculations and analysation of ditch related variables in drained forest areas. Gathering and combining all this information can be a laborious but it helps and improves modelling related to ditching and carbon fluxes. Finnish Natural Resource Institute's SOMPA-project tries to find more ecologically sustainable methods for f...

"GIS applications in teaching and research" presents the outcomes of a graduate level course GEOG-G303 GIS project work. The course was conducted in small working groups, each of which was assigned a separate project topic. The topics came from different research groups or teachers in the Department of Geosciences and Geography and vary fro...

Olika arbetssätt hos geografilärare i mångkulturella klassrum Skolan har blivit mer mångfaldig och flerspråkig under de senaste decennierna. Även geografilärare möter allt oftare elever med invandrarbakgrund i sitt klassrum. Därför ökar också utmaningarna med det inhemska undervisningsspråket, finskan eller svenskan. Jag har skrivit om detta tema p...

Alhaisimman kustannuksen reitin määrittäminen tarkasti ja tehokkaasti luokitellusta paikkatietoaineistosta Alhaisimman kustannuksen reitin määrittäminen on perinteinen paikkatietoanalyysi, jolla määrite-tään alhaisin kustannus jostakin lähtöpisteestä mui-hin kustannuspinnan kohteisiin sekä selvitetään reitti, jolla tämä alhaisin kustannus saavuteta...

Geoinformatiikan merkitys yhteiskunnassa kasvaa Paikkaan sidotun tiedon merkitys on ollut jo jon-kin aikaa hyvässä nosteessa niin yhteiskunnassa kuin tutkimusmaailmassakin. Esimerkiksi monil-la yhteiskunta-, ihmis-ja ympäristötieteellisillä aloilla on havahduttu geoinformatiikan tarjoamiin aineistollisiin, menetelmällisiin, analyyttisiin ja visuali...

Our project was to gather a species database from 4 different portals. Portals and their usage are introduced in general. The gathered database features 400 species and 3 723 664 observations of species. We further discuss the background of the study and our report also features potential future usage for the database. For example, forecasting clim...

This article demonstrates a workflow to enhance a Finnish macroseismic questionnaire and further instructions for the moderator. The objective of this study was to improve and develop the questionnaire form that the Institute of seismology, University of Helsinki, uses to collect crowdsourced macroseismic observations from earthquakes. With the que...

As new datasets and methods become more available and comparable for analyzing accessibility, and especially on multi-modal travel effects on different contour catchments, there is a growing need to further test and advance these studies. In this study, we used centrality measure calculations, more accurately closeness and degree centralities, to c...

ESA CCI Land Cover is a global land cover data set with 38 land cover classes. The aim of this study was to determine the accuracy of the global land cover data in Finland compared to finer resolution national datasets produced by Corine and Luke and to examine ESA dataset’s suitability for national level use. The datasets were adjusted so that the...

The goal of our study was to collect various GIS data from Taita Taveta County, Kenya, and share it with the Taita Taveta County’s GIS experts in order to help develop local GIS infrastructure. For this purpose, we built a geodatabase in ArcMap consisting of various data about natural and human environment. The datasets are divided in the geodataba...

This article examines geography teachers' experiences and thoughts about the content of geography lessons in the culturally diverse classroom. How do teachers feel about possibilities and challenges in the context of cultural diversity? A total of six geography teachers from secondary and high schools from Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland, were...

Geoinformatiikan opetus suomalaisissa yliopistoissa muuttuu vauhdilla. Muutoksen taustalla on yhtäällä yliopistojen koulutusohjelmien yleiset muutokset ja toisaalta alan yleisen yleinen kehitysvauhti. Nopeasti muuttuvassa ympäristöstä nykytilan ymmärryksen rooli korostuu. Tämä raportti kartoittaa geoinformatiikan yliopisto-opetuksen tilaa Suomessa...

We report pollen-stratigraphical evidence for an abrupt, episodic, and widespread population decline of alder (Alnus), one of the most common boreal tree genera, during the medieval period in northern Europe. Decline of alder pollen values was observed both in forest hollow pollen records reflecting local vegetation of pristine forests and in polle...

A major part of the organized sports in Finland has been done either in the political leftist worker’s federation Työväen Urheiluliitto (TUL) or in Suomen Voimistelu- ja Urheiluliitto (SVUL) in the latter part of the 20th century. Although the difference of the ideology between the two organizations has been identified, there is a lack of research...

Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli selvittää lahopuun merkitystä kuusivaltaisen luonnonmetsän uu­distumisessa. Tutkimme tätä mittaamalla kuusentaimien määrää ja kasvua lahopuulla ja muilla metsän kasvualustoilla. Muut kasvualustaluokat olivat sammal sekä karike/muu. Lisäksi analysoimme lahopuun vedenpidätysominaisuuksia ja hiili­typpisuhdetta (C/N), jot...

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We simulated Gross Primary Production (GPP) of Finnish forests using a landsurface model (LSM), JSBACH, and a semi-empirical stand-flux model PRELES, and compared their predictions with the MODIS GPP product. JSBACH used information about plant functional type fractions in 0.167° pixels. PRELES applied inventory-scaled information about forest stru...

Defoliation (crown thinning) is widely used as a rapid method of tree condition assessment. As a method that is based on subjective visual observation it might be influenced by statistically significant observer bias. Significant observer bias has been discovere in some countries. We analyzed the significance of observer bias occurring in the Finla...

We analyzed forest landscape changes in a western Finnish breeding area of Siberian jays utilizing Landsat MSS and TM satellite images taken during a 29-year period (1976-2005). We found that Siberian jays appeared to favour closed spruce-dominated forest patches, possibly because they provide better visual protection against predators. Such spruce...

The photosynthesis of ground vegetation is dependent on species composition and environmental factors that are extremely diverse during forest succession. However, present in situ measurements over the gross primary production (GPP) of ground vegetation are unable to cover this variability. The primary objective of the present study was to estimate...

Tutkijat työskentelevät yhteiskunnassa paikalla, jossa heillä on asiantuntijoina suuri vastuu tuottamastaan tiedosta. Lisäksi tiedeyhteisö on monimutkainen organismi, jossa tutkijat, instituutiot ja rahoittajat muodostavat sekavalta vaikuttavan muurahaispesän. Tutkimustyötä tehdään yhä enemmän verkottuneena ja tutkijoiden liikkuvuus on lisääntynyt...

Summary 1. Norway spruce ( Picea abies ), one of the dominant tree species in Eurasia, has spread slowly westward in northern Europe, invading eastern Finland about 6500 calibrated years ago (cal. years BP), eastern central Sweden about 2700 cal. years BP and southern Norway about 1000 cal. years BP. Its spread is the most recent and best constrain...

Recent investigations show that the pollen accumulation rate (PAR) of the common tree taxa is directly related to the biomass and, by inference, to the population size of the taxa around the study site. Fossil PAR records preserved in lakes provide therefore a potential proxy for quantitative biomass and population reconstructions. We use the high-...

The forest soil carbon sink is of potentially great monetary value under subsequent climate conventions, but the costs of reliable monitoring have never been analysed. Our study aimed at evaluating (1) costs and precision of varied sampling intensities at the plot level, (2) sample size, and (3) costs needed to detect a change in soil carbon at the...

We studied within-site spatial variation of the carbon stock in the organic layer of boreal forest soil. A total of 1,006 soil samples were taken in ten forest stands (five Scots pine stands and five Norway spruce stands). Our results indicate that the spatial autocorrelation disappears at a distance of 75-225 cm. This spatial autocorrelation shoul...

Since biomass is one of the key variables in ecosystem studies, widespread effort has aimed to facilitating its estimation. Numerous stand-specific volume and biomass equations are available, but these cannot be used for scaling up biomass to the regional level where several age-classes and structural types of stands coexist. Therefore simplified g...

In the early phases of succession, the proportion of biomass comprising understorey vegetation may be considerable and, therefore, it plays a significant role in the annual nutrient and carbon cycling of forest ecosystems. The aim of our study was to identify the most significant forest-site attributes affecting the above-ground biomass of understo...

Comparable regional scale estimates for the carbon balance of forests are needed for scientific and political purposes. We developed a method for deriving these estimates from readily available forest inventory data by using statistical biomass models and dynamic modelling of litter and soil. Here, we demonstrate this method and apply it to Finland...

In the present study, the aboveground biomass of the understorey vegetation of boreal coniferous forests was modelled according to the percentage cover. A total of 224 observations from 22 stands in upland forests and 195 observations from 14 different studies in peatland forests were utilized for the present analyses. The relationships between bio...

A review of stem volume and biomass equations for tree species growing in Europe (Zianis et al. 2005) resulted in suggestions for additional equations. The numbers of original equations, compiled from scientific articles were 607 for biomass and 230 for stem volume. On the basis of the suggestions and an updated literature search, some new equation...

Geothermally active areas provide unique, stressed environments characterized by unusual vegetation assemblages and rare plant species (Fig. 1). Natural vegetation associated with geothermal activity is a rare vegetation type globally. Exploitation of geothermal fluid can result in a lowering of deep system water tables, which in turn can lead to c...

In the present study, the suitability of optical ASTER satellite data (with 9 spectral bands) for estimating the biomass of boreal forest stands in mineral soils was tested. The remote sensing data were analysed and tested together with standwise forest inventory data. Stand volume estimates were converted to aboveground tree biomass using biomass...

To understand carbon cycle and flows of forests, accurate information on tree-component-specific litter production of trees is needed. In the ecosystem models, the litterfall of living trees is usually predicted by the biomass component by average amounts corresponding to site conditions or by multiplying the biomass of the growing stock by the com...

A review of stem volume and biomass equations for tree species growing in Europe is presented. The mathematical forms of the empirical models, the associated statistical parameters and information about the size of the trees and the country of origin were col - lated from scientific articles and from technical reports. The total number of the compi...

The distinctive environmental conditions associated with geothermal sites allow unusual assemblages of plants to become established. These may include disjuncts normally found in warmer climates, and combinations of plants from surrounding communities capable of surviving under high-stress conditions of soil mineralisation and temperature. Where gr...

Turnover rates of needle and branch biomass, number of needle cohorts, and needle-shed dynamics were modelled for Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) in southern Finland. Biomass turnover rates, vertical distribution, and biomass of the branches were modelled simultaneously. The rate of needle turnover was determined from needle-shed dynamics....

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