Joachim Strengbom
Research
Plant Community Composition and Ecosystem Functioning
My research revolves around how environmental changes alter forest plant communities and how changes of the plant community can influence ecosystem functions and services. For example, I address how forest management influence the delivery of different types of services and functions, that is timber production, carbon storage, production of wild berries and biodiversity. An important aim of my research is to identify how the delivery of different services are related to each other, with the long-term goal of developing management schemes that better can consider the multi-use potential of our forest.
I also address how forest fire influence plant communities, and how such changes influence carbon and nutrient dynamics. I am especially interested in how different pre- and post-fire land-use influence plant communities and fire derived losses and post-fire build-up of soil carbon and nitrogen.
Forest Conservation Biology
The long-term goal of my research within this topic is to develop management schemes that can maintain delivery of forest products without risk losing biodiversity. My research includes evaluations of methods used to mitigate negative effects of industrial forestry. For example, I address to what extent management options such as retention forestry are useful measures to maintain biodiversity.
I also work on developing indices and methods to identify areas of high conservation concern, i.e. areas that should be set-aside from industrial forestry. In this context, methods, using surrogates for biodiversity has become instrumental, and just in Sweden over a million hectare of productive forestland have been excluded from forest management based on such methods. The empirical support behind the methods used is, however, surprisingly poor. An important aim with my research is to improve the empirical support for the methods, with the long-term goal of improving the methods used for identifying areas suitable for forestry and those that should be set-aside.
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