Örjan Grönlund

Abstract

Forests provide a variety of ecosystem services and traditional forest management is largely based on the extraction of one product, wood. Multifunctional forestry, forest management aimed at benefitting multiple ecosystem services, has emerged as awareness has grown of other forest ecosystem services. Nature conservation management is a type of multifunctional forestry promoting ecosystem services other than harvest of wood, most commonly biodiversity and recreation. While the benefits of multifunctional forestry and nature conservation management is recognized, there are knowledge gaps regarding how to perform these operations. The overarching objective of this thesis is to increase knowledge and improve implementation of multifunctional forest operations in Sweden. This is addressed through four studies aiming at answering questions related to how forest operations can be implemented in multifunctional forestry. The findings indicate that many conservation values in forest land can be identified using commonly available GISdata. In most cases, nature conservation management operations are not complicated, but forest managers are disincentivised by conflicting goals and fear of high costs and criticism. The conclusion from detailed studies of operations is that costs in multifunctional operations are higher than conventional operations, but when the entire management system is analysed, effects on net revenues may be small. The general conclusion is that, in many cases, multifunctional forestry is not limited by the operations but rather a lack of clear goals and strategies for achieving goals and evaluating their attainment.