Browsing by Author "Jumppanen, Heimo"

Recreational use of forests promotes both health and well-being thus reducing health care costs, which in turn gains the whole national economy. When moving around in the forests the recreational users value the attractive landscapes and the facilities for outdoor activities provided by the forests. A great deal of the recreational use takes place in commercial forests, which means that in forest management planning there is a need to take into account the interests of different stakeholders. According to previous preference studies recreational users in Finland in general prefer open forest stands with old trees and dislike large clearcut areas, logging residues and tracks made by the logging machinery. Also the forest owners in Finland have been showing a growing interest towards uneven-aged (continuous cover) forestry and matters concerning forest landscape and recreational use of forests. In order to produce forests suitable for recreational use by means of forest management planning there is a need for better information on how and to what extent the recreational users notice the structural features of a forest stand (e.g. density, tree species etc.) when judging on the scenic beauty of the stand or it’s suitability for their leisure activities. This was the aim of this study as well as to find out how well the methods used in this study work in finding the answers to these questions. The study was done as a survey in Ruunaa hiking area where the respondents were asked to fill a questionnaire where they were met unlike in previous preference studies, where the interviews have been done in predefined places. According to the results the judgement of how attractive a forest stand is is affected not only by the structural features of that forest stand. This has also been the conclusion of many previous studies. In case of Ruunaa the lake scenes and the sounds of the rapids form an essential part of the landscape and this affected the valuations. Structural features were seen only in the landscape close to the beholder. When the respondents compared the interview site to a commercial forest of same age, they found that the commercial forests were suitable for various leisure activities as well as the interview site, thoug Ruunaa was considered to be better for activities related with nature (e.g. birdwatching or botanical interests). One of the original aims of the study was also to find out how the respondents related to the small scale gap felling experiments in Ruunaa. No respondents were met at these felling sites, but some of the respondents told they had seen them and that they didn’t seem to have anything against the gap fellings.