Timo Pukkala

University of Eastern Finland | UEF · School of Forest Sciences

Korean pine is one of the most important tree species in northeastern China, where Korean pine plantations produce timber and edible seeds. Often, seeds create more income than timber. Predicting the timber and cone yields of alternative management schedules of the plantations involves uncertainty because the future climatic conditions for tree gro...

In order to improve the prediction accuracy of the diameter growth model for Pinus koraiensis plantations with incomplete data sets, individual tree diameter growth models were constructed using an optimization modeling approach based on plot data with different remeasurement intervals from 75 P.koraiensis forests in Heilongjiang Province from 1980...

The combined use of LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) scanning and field inventories can provide spatially continuous wall-to-wall information on forest characteristics. This information can be used in many ways in forest mapping, scenario analyses, and forest management planning. This study aimed to find the optimal way to obtain continuous fore...

The standard young stands (initial planting density of 2500, 3300 trees/hm2, site index of 12, 14, and 16m) of Pinus koraiensis plantation in the main distribution area of Heilongjiang Province were selected as the research objects. The Weibull function was used for predicting the diameter distribution of Korean pine plantation with different site...

Black cottonwood (Populus balsamifera ssp. trichocarpa) was initially introduced to Iceland in 1944 from the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska and has been widely planted in shelterbelts and afforestation projects since the 1980s. There is currently much interest in increasing the planting of black cottonwood, especially in carbon sequestration projects, b...

Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta subsp. contorta) is one of the most important tree species planted in Iceland. The current plantation area is 7100 ha, the first plantations being 80 years old. This study presents models for simulating the development of Icelandic lodgepole pine plantations on an individual-tree basis. The model set consists of a sit...

【Objective】At present, China's forestry is in a critical stage of improving the quality of forest resources and transforming the management targets. Management decisions at the stand level are of great significance as, for most management objective, forest level production is the sum of the production of stands. In this study, a simulation-optimiza...

Diameter distribution models play an important role in forest inventories, growth prediction, and management. The Weibull probability density function is widely used in forestry. Although a number of methods have been proposed to predict or recover the Weibull distribution, their applicability and predictive performance for the major tree species o...

Wood use is expanding to new markets, driven by the need to substitute fossil-intensive products and energy. Wood products can contribute to climate change mitigation, if they have a lower fossil footprint than alternative products serving the same function. However, the climate change mitigation potential is contingent on the net fossil and biogen...

Tutkimuksessa selvitettiin prosessimallinnukseen ja kokeellisiin tutkimuksiin perustuen jatkuvan kasvatuksen ja tasaikäismetsätalouden vaikutusta metsäisiltä valuma-alueilta tapahtuvaan typpi- ja fosforikuormitukseen. Laskennan perustana oli, että metsätalouden vaikutus vesistökuormitukseen koostuu soiden ensiojituksen pitkäaikaiskuormituksesta eli...

Increased use of laser scanning in forest inventories is leading to the adoption and development of automated stand delineation methods. The most common categories of these methods are region merging and region growing. However, recent literature proposes alternative methods that are based on the ideas of cellular automata, self-organizing maps, an...

Background Laser scanning and individual-tree detection are used increasingly in forest inventories. As a consequence, methods that optimize forest management at the level of individual trees will be gradually developed and adopted. Results The current study proposed a hierarchical two-level optimization method for tree-level planning where the cu...

Wind damage and the bark beetle outbreaks associated with it are major threats to non-declining, long-term wood production in boreal forests. We studied whether the risk of wind damage in a forested landscape could be decreased by using stand neighbourhood information in conjunction with terrain elevation information. A reference management plan mi...

Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) is one of the main tree species used in forestry in Iceland, growing well in all parts of the country. In view of the importance of Sitka spruce in Iceland, there is need for a reliable growth model that will support multifunctional forest management and planning. This study developed growth models for Sitka spruce u...

Any-aged forest management (AAF) is a means to reduce clear-felling without compromising profitability or timber production. The concept of AAF is to choose between clear-felling or thinning one harvest at a time based on what is better at that time in terms of the management objectives for the forest. No permanent choice is made between rotation f...

Individual tree detection is an increasing trend in LiDAR-based forest inventories. The locations, heights, and crown areas of the detected trees can be estimated rather directly from the LiDAR data by using the LiDAR-based canopy height model and segmentation methods to delineate the tree crowns. However, the most important tree variable is the di...

Responsible forest policy promotes management that does not impair the multiple uses of forests or decrease their regulative effects and biological diversity. The most important regulative effect of boreal forests is their ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. High biological diversity improves the resilience of forest ecosystems an...

Population growth and human activities have resulted in drastic changes in land use in many areas of the world, including the Hyrcania region in northern Iran. Land-use changes affect the hydrological processes of water basins. This study evaluated the effect of land-use changes on runoff over 15 years in the Haraz River basin located in Hyrcania u...

Norway’s most common tree species, Picea abies (L.) Karst. (Norway spruce), is often infected with Heterobasidion parviporum Niemelä & Korhonen and Heterobasidion annosum (Fr.) Bref.. Because Pinus sylvestris L. (Scots pine) is less susceptible to rot, it is worth considering if converting rot-infested spruce stands to pine improves economic perfor...

The use of airborne laser scanning (LS) is increasing in forestry. Scanning can be conducted from manned aircrafts or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). The scanning data are often used to calculate various attributes for small raster cells. These attributes can be used to segment the forest into homogeneous areas, called segments, micro-stands, or, l...

This section introduces methods for describing the shape of forest trees, using models of tree crowns, stems, root systems, and biomass. The effect of competition on individual tree growth is also included in this chapter.

Policies dealing with a broad range of forestry issues are often based on definitions created for the purpose of assessing global forest resources. Forest definitions emerging from prevailing objectives of land use have diversified, with new ones being added as forest management policies have broadened, focusing not only on timber production but gr...

Forest assessment, including remote assessment, is a vast and specialized topic that cannot be covered adequately in a textbook with a focus on sustaining forest ecosystems. Specific issues of forest assessment (a brief reference to the nested plot design and to the sampling of low woody vegetation) are included here, but the main focus of this sec...

Crutzen (2002) assigned the term “Anthropocene” to the current human-dominated geological epoch. He concluded that mankind would remain a major environmental force in the future. Ecologists and engineers should therefore guide society toward environmentally sustainable management. Humans are able to identify the causes and disastrous consequences o...

A detailed examination of observations collected in the field, or remotely, is essential for understanding the basic features and dynamics of a forest community and to identify dissimilarities between different communities. Such an analysis typically includes an assessment of forest density and competition, structure and heterogeneity, and specific...

Quantitative models are important for understanding and predicting the structure and dynamics of complex systems. This chapter introduces site models and models of forest production. Harvest events that cause abrupt modifications in the distribution of temperature and radiation with associated changes in competition, growth, soil processes, and hab...

Forests produce several types of benefits to both forest landowners and society. The social benefit of private forestry is equal to private benefit plus positive externalities minus negative externalities. This study developed alternative metrics for the evaluation of the social benefit of forest management. Forest management was assessed in terms...

The need for distance-dependent individual-tree models for diameter increment and survival is increasing due to the increased use of individual-tree detection in forest inventories based on remote sensing data. Distance-dependent models can be used to analyze alternative thinning schemes, planting patterns and species mixing. The present study deve...

Finnish forest structures vary from even-aged planted forests to two- and multi-storied mixed stands. Also, the range of silvicultural systems in use has increased because thinning from above and continuous cover management are gaining popularity. The data currently available for modelling stand dynamics are insufficient to allow the development of...

Forest inventory based on airborne laser scanning produces data for small grid cells. Various segmentation methods are used to cluster the grid cells into spatially continuous larger areas that correspond to forest stands. This study examined the performance of self-organizing map (SOM) in the delineation of forest stands. The SOM is also called Ko...

• Key message Errors in forest stand attributes can lead to sub-optimal management prescriptions concerning the set management objectives. When the objective is net present value, errors in mean diameter result in greater losses than similar errors in basal area, and underestimation greater losses than overestimation. • Context Errors in forest in...

Humans are able to identify the causes and disastrous consequences of neglect and exploitation of the forest ecosystems of the earth. Sustaining the world's ecosystems, for our own benefit and for the survival of life on earth, requires a scientific approach based on evidence about forest diversity, structure and dynamics, and appropriate methods o...

Background Forest inventories are increasingly based on airborne laser scanning (ALS). In Finland, the results of these inventories are calculated for small grid cells, 16 m by 16 m in size. Use of grid data in forest planning results in the additional requirement of aggregating management prescriptions into large enough continuous treatment units....

Background Modern remote sensing methods enable the prediction of tree-level forest resource data. However, the benefits of using tree-level data in forest or harvest planning is not clear given a relative paucity of research. In particular, there is a need for tree-level methods that simultaneously account for the spatial distribution of trees and...

In the original publication of this article Pukkala, 2020 the Fig. 6 is not correct, the correct figure is as below. The error in this Correction and low quality Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 have been updated in the original article and the caption of Fig. 5 was modified.

Purpose of Review The increased popularity and commercial use of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) calls for the development of models for NTFPs to include their predicted yields in forest management planning and to evaluate the potential of multi-functional forest management. This study assesses and discusses the current state of the art and tren...

Boreal forests produce multiple ecosystem services for the society. Their trade-offs determine whether they should be produced simultaneously or whether it is preferable to assign separate areas to different ecosystem services. We use simulation and optimization to analyse the correlations, trade-offs and production levels of several ecosystem serv...

Ingrowth is an important element of stand dynamics in several silvicultural systems, especially in con-tinuous cover forestry. Earlier predictive models for ingrowth in Finnish forests are few and not based on up-to-date statistical methods. Ingrowth is here defined as the number of trees over 1.3 m entering a plot. This study developed new ingrowt...

Forestry can help to mitigate climate change by storing carbon in trees, forest soils, and wood products. Forest owners can be subsidized if forestry removes carbon from the atmosphere and taxed if forestry produces emissions. Errors in forest inventory data can lead to losses in net present value (NPV) if management prescriptions are selected base...

Key message We examined the accuracy of the stand attribute data based on airborne laser scanning (ALS) provided by the Finnish Forest Centre. The precision of forest inventory data was compared for the first time with operative logging data measured by the harvester. ContextAirborne laser scanning (ALS) is increasingly used together with models to...

Forestry sequestrates carbon from the atmosphere and stores it in living tree biomass, dead organic matter (DOM) and wood-based products. A part of the sequestration might be “additional“, i.e., increased sequestration compared to the business as usual forestry. This study developed a methodology for calculating the additional part of the carbon se...

Key message Forest owners who maximize profitability with a low discount rate or whose management goals are related to conservation and recreation, rarely sell timber. These owners make it difficult to achieve the high harvesting targets of the growing bioeconomy sector of Finland. To increase timber supply, these landowners should be informed abou...

Korean pine is the most important plantation tree species in northeast China. Besides timber, it produces edible seeds. Economic comparisons between alternative management schedules of Korean pine plantations require information on tree growth but also on seed yields since Korean pine seeds generate significant economic returns. This study develope...

Key message Multi-objective forest planning methods were used to assess the trade-offs between three ecosystem services: timber production, erosion protection and biodiversity. The use of trade-off analysis helps to define proper weights for the management objectives and evaluate the feasibility of obtaining economic profit from timber while contro...

The carbon sink of boreal forests can be increased by paying forest landowners for carbon sequestration and taxing carbon releases. The aim of the study was to analyze the effect of carbon pricing on optimal forest management when forests are managed for maximal discounted benefits from timber production and carbon payments. A 0.5% random sample of...

Forests and forest industries can contribute to climate change mitigation by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, by storing it in biomass, and by fabricating products that substitute more greenhouse gas emission intensive materials and energy. The objectives of the study are to specify alternative scenarios for the diversification of wood prod...

Airborne laser scanning (ALS) is becoming common in forest inventories. The data obtained by laser scanning contain the locations of the echoes of laser pulses. If these data are used in forest management, they need to be segmented into spatially continuous stands that are homogeneous in terms of stand attributes. Prior to segmentation, the laser p...

Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis Siebold & Zucc.) is economically the most important tree species in northeast China. Korean pine plantations are established and managed for the production of timber and seeds. Despite the importance of the species, few models have been developed for the comparison of alternative management schedules. Model development...

In sustainable forestry, forests should produce multiple ecosystem services for society, such as timber, carbon sequestration and biodiversity. Therefore, in the evaluation of forest management strategies, we have to consider the impacts of management on several ecosystem services. In this study, we compared the effects of five different forest man...

Secondary mixed forests of larch and birch are common in the mountainous areas of north-eastern China. In the Daxing’an Mountain of Heilongjiang Province, the larch species of this type of forest is Larix gmelinii Rupr. and the birch species is Betula platyphylla Suk. Science-based information on the optimal sustainable management of these forests...

Based on data from long-term experimental fields with Norway spruce ( (L.) H. Karst.), we developed new stem taper and bark functions for Norway. Data was collected from 477 trees in stands across Norway. Three candidate functions which have shown good performance in previous studies (Kozak 02, Kozak 97 and Bi) were fitted to the data as fixed-effe...

A displacement factor (DF) may be used to describe the efficiency of using wood-based products or fuels instead of fossil-based ones to reduce net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, the DFs of individual products and their production volumes could not be used alone to evaluate the climate impacts of forest utilization. For this reason, in thi...

Overlooking the risk of wind and snow damage in forest planning may lead to suboptimal management pre- scriptions. In this study, we analysed the optimal management of an even-aged, spruce-dominated stand in Norway under the risk of snow and wind damage. The management aim was to maximize discounted net rev- enues of timber production. We used a si...

In forest management planning, errors in predicted stand attributes might lead to suboptimal decisions that result in decreased net present value (NPV). Forest inventory data will have higher value if the amount of suboptimal decisions can be decreased. Therefore, the value of information can be measured through the decrease in inoptimality losses,...

Raster type of forest inventory data with site and growing stock variables interpreted for small square-shaped grid cells are increasingly available for forest planning. In Finland, there are two sources of this type of lattice data: the multisource national forest inventory and the inventory that is based on airborne laser scanning (ALS). In both...

The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of using alternative types of forest inventory units (FIUs) in multi-objective forest planning. The research was carried out in a Mediterranean forest area in central Spain. The study area was divided, alternatively, into pixels (square cells) and segments of two different sizes (small and large),...

Management of tree plantations needs information on the number, time, intensity and type of thinnings, and the length of the rotation. Economically optimal plantation management depends on discount rate and site fertility. This study proposed a new approach to developing management instructions for tree plantations, simultaneously for all discount...

Forest inventories based on remote sensing often interpret stand characteristics for small raster cells instead of traditional stand compartments. This is the case for instance in the Lidar-based and multi-source forest inventories of Finland where the interpretation units are 16 m × 16 m grid cells. Using these cells as simulation units in forest...

The study traced the effect of plot positioning errors when computing present state information (forest inventory) and also when formulating spatial problems based on that data. The full paper is here: http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/9/7/371

This study analyzed the performance of distance-based objective variables as an alternative to adjacency-based variables in spatial optimization when the aim is to aggregate small forest segments into harvest blocks. Distance-based objective variables maximized harvested volume within a certain distance from a harvested segment. Segments that const...

The global growth of the consumption of non-wood forest products (NWFPs) is evident due to the current trends in lifestyle and consumption. Alongside the increased popularity and commercial use of NWFPs, their yields are also more often taken into account in forest management planning. Empirical yield models recently developed for different NWFPs e...

We studied the potential effects of management and harvesting intensity on the timber supply from Finnish forests in a changing climate and, consequently, the possibilities of meeting the increasing wood demand of the growing forest-based bioeconomy. The study employed data from the 11th National Forest Inventory of Finland. Plots located on forest...

Forest management planning is increasingly relying on airborne laser scanning (ALS) in forest inventory. The area-based method to interpret ALS data requires sample plots measured in the field. The aim of this study was to assess and trace the impacts of the positioning errors of field plots along the entire forest management planning process, from...

Kirja sisältää metsän jatkuvasta kasvatuksesta kertovia artikkeleita. Artikkeleissa kerrotaan mm. uusista jokametsän hakkuuohjeista, jatkuvan kasvatuksen hakkuiden vaikutuksesta metsäluontoon ja riistaan ja harsintajulkilausuman syntyvaiheista.

Jokametsän hakkuuohjeiden noudattaminen parantaa metsätalouden kannattavuutta 15–20 % verrattuna metsien käsittelyyn alaharvennuksin ja avohakkuin tasaikäis-metsätalouden periaatteella Kehittämiskeskus Tapion julkaisemia ohjeita noudattaen. Puuntuotos paranee myös.

On osoitettu, että metsien vaihtelevuus ja monimuotoisuus (diversiteetti) korreloi metsien sopeutumis- ja palautumiskyvyn eli resilienssin kanssa. Kirjoituksessa esitellään laskelmia sekametsien ja lehtipuiden suosimisen vaikutuksesta metsän puulajidiversiteettiin, joka epäsuorasti mittaa myös metsien sopeutumis- ja palautumiskyä.

Key message Optimal management of cork oak forest stands was analyzed for different site indices and cork growth rates. Optimal debarking intervals varied during the rotation and were sometimes shorter or longer than the officially recommended range of 9–14 years. Context Quercus suber L. is one of the most important multipurpose tree species in t...

• Key message The optimal management of larch (Larix olgensis) plantations in Northeast China consisted of 2 or 3 thinnings and a rotation length of 55–61 years when economic profitability, wood production, and carbon sequestration were simultaneously maximized. Wood production ranged from 5.4 to 11.7 m3 ha−1 a−1 , depending on site quality. • Con...

Many forest-dwelling species are dependent on deadwood. Sources of deadwood include competition- and senescence-related mortality of trees, and various damages. This study described a methodology for predicting the effect of wind damage on the amount of deadwood and suitability of the forest for saproxylic species. The methodology was used in a for...

In this study, any-aged forestry (AAF) refers to forest management in which no explicit choice is made between even-and uneven-aged management, or between rotation forest management and continuous cover forestry. Optimal AAF is more profitable than optimal even-or uneven-aged management because AAF has fewer constraints. This study developed manage...

There is a notable potential for utilizing marketed mushrooms in Finnish forests. The most marketed mushrooms in Finland are Boletus edulis and Lactarius spp. To improve preconditions for the use of this potential the stand management was optimized separately for joint production of (1) timber and B. edulis, (2) timber and Lactarius spp. and (3) ti...