Abstract
The overall aim of this project is to provide a solid and broad foundation for the incorporation of forest ecosystem services in economic, political, and social decision-making processes. This will be done through analyses of the occurrence of ecosystem services delivered by Swedish forests, based on data from the Swedish National Forest Inventory, with focus on tree, berry, and game production, soil carbon storage, vascular plant species richness, dead wood occurrence, and storm and pest resistance. We will analyze which environmental factors are of importance for the number of ecosystem services and the levels of these, and quantify the relative importance of stand characteristics (tree species richness and composition, stem density, age structure, etc.) compared to other factors (temperature, nutrient availability, precipitation, etc.). In this we will investigate how specific, commercially viable, tree-species mixtures influence levels and numbers of ecosystem services. We will also investigate how the number of ecosystem services, their average levels, and variation in levels change over geographic scales, to obtain knowledge relevant to decision-making processes. With this knowledge as a foundation, we will then model future occurrence of forest ecosystem services under different land-use scenarios and under changed environmental conditions. Such information is crucial if decisions regarding forest ecosystem services are to be based on relevant scientific grounds.
Sweden