Browsing by Author "Siivonen, Salla"

Finnish forests have a major impact on climate change at a national level, as approximately 86 % of Finland's surface area is forest and forests are a significant carbon sink. Continuous cover forestry is better from the point of view of carbon sequestration than even-age forestry. The Finnish Forest Act was reformed in 2014. Forest professionals and forest owners have had time to adapt to the new Act, to consider the use of alternative methods or, possibly, to take these methods into practice. Forest professionals have a clear position of power through information and communication to forest owners and the creation of a prevailing atmosphere of attitudes. Examination of the attitudes and the values of forest professionals are important as their attitudes and values have an impact on the recommendation of forest management methods. The purpose of this study was to examine how familiar continuous cover forestry was to forest professionals and forest owners as well as their perceptions of it. In addition, the values of forest professionals and how different factors influence their perceptions of continuous cover forestry were examined. The data used in this research was from a survey conducted in 2017. According to the results, forest professionals and forest owners are quite familiar with continuous cover forestry. The forest professionals’ perceptions of it were more negative compared to the forest owners’ perceptions. Gender and educational background were factors that were found to impact the attitudes of the forest professionals. Their perceptions of continuous cover forestry also affected the percentage of continuous cover forestry recommended by them. Forest professionals valued the sales proceeds of wood the most and the carbon sequestration of forests the least.