Browsing by discipline "Forest Economics"

This study aims to reveal Non-Industrial Private Forest Owners’ willingness to contribute biobanks in the case of flying squirrel. Especially Private Forest Owners’ compensation in money for improving the nesting circumstances of the flying squirrel has been examined. It has also been studied what affects the compensation requirement of respondents and what kind of socioeconomic background those respondents have who are interested in biobanks. The study was executed via e-mail in 2015 to 3793 members of Forest Management association Lounametsä and Päijät-häme. Compensation question was executed by contingent valuation method as an open willingness to accept question. To verify the representativeness of the sample it was compared to the Suomalainen Metsänomistaja 2010 study. Factor analysis was also made to enable comparing and regression analysis. The backgrounds of the Forest Owners who were interested in biobanks were compared to the other respondents. According to the results Forest Owners who are interested in Biobanks differs from the others respondents by age, income, education, occupation and the size of owned forest area. In the experiences of different biodiversity and conservation projects were also found differences. Respondents who were interested in biobanks, were also more eager to participate projects aiming to improve the state of biodiversity.

Forests provide not just timber, but also a host of other benefits, such as carbon sequestration, biodiversity, recreational opportunities and beautiful scenery. From an economic perspective, such a multiplicity of utili-zation options of forests may be interpreted as joint production. However, these utilization options are often competing at least to some extent. In a changing society, the importance of non-timber benefits are increas-ing, and forest management is subject to more stringent environmental requirements. Studies have shown that targets for the use of forests have become more varied, and the interest in alternative methods of forest management has increased. The aim of this study was to create an overall picture of how environmental values are taken into account in forest economics at the stand level. Special attention was paid to uneven-aged forest management, since the method is often considered more appropriate for multi-objective forest management. Uneven-aged man-agement of forests may enable a more efficient joint production of many benefits. Nevertheless, to maintain e.g. forest biodiversity in uneven-aged stand, there is still need to ensure a robust amount of individual trees and dead wood by leaving sufficient number of retention trees. Hence, valuing environmental benefits may well have an impact on optimal stand management. In this study an optimization model is formulated to analyze uneven-aged forest management when stand-ing old trees have an environmental value. Optimization problem was solved without any time constraints or a predetermined steady state. The model was tested with both linear and nonlinear environmental valuation function. In addition, it was examined how relative value of environmental benefits and interest rate affect the structure of the stand and harvest revenues. As an alternative method, this study presented optimization of harvests while satisfying a constraint intended to meet an environmental management objective. This constraint was used to study the opportunity cost of retention trees. In conclusion, the results indicated that the valuation of environmental benefits affects the optimal harvest-ing and stand structure. When raising the interest rate, fewer retention trees should be left to the stand. The number of retention trees affects present value of harvest revenues, and the optimal solution between com-peting benefits depends on the preferences of the decision maker.