Browsing by Subject "Biodiversity"

The need to develop and expand urban areas is increasing in most countries, but urbanization also increases the threat for global biodiversity. Some cities have acknowledged this challenge and formed strategies and action plans for biodiversity preservation. How can we ensure that such strategies are realized in city planning? Negotiations are a crucial part of urban planning, and therefore can be a leverage point of intervention to effectively implement strategies to pro-tect biodiversity. However, little is known about the dynamics of the actual negotiation process in city planning. I applied a game theoretic approach to study how information availability influences the suc-cess and efficiency of negotiations. A role-playing game was used to simulate a negotiation on specific measures to preserve biodiversity in a residential building project. Eleven urban devel-opment specialists played the game with different sets of information. In addition to the direct outcomes of the negotiation, I analysed the post hoc discussion and arguments used to gain in-sights into perceptions of biodiversity-related negotiations in urban planning. Results indicate that information availability can increase the efficiency of negotiations. Partici-pants favour principled and integrative negotiation, but incomplete information seems to push them to take a more positional stance. The post hoc discussion also reveals some issues rele-vant to the design of urban planning process for biodiversity. The overall results suggest that a simple game-theoretic framework, implemented in (a) game-like simulation with quasi-experimental control and (b) qualitative analysis of discussions, holds potential for both under-standing (i) how decision makers frame and resolve the negotiation with conflicting interests and (ii) how to design efficient administrative processes taking into account not only the partic-ipants’ preferences but also wider public interests, such as biodiversity preservation.

During this study I examined the roles that resource diversity and trophic complexity play in the emergence and maintenance of biodiversity (ecological complexity) via the use of the evolutionary software Avida. I found a positive relationship between resource diversity and ecological complexity as would be expected from previous studies. However, a trade off was observed between ecological complexity and resource diversity, following the principle of diminishing returns. I also showed that trophic complexity exhibited a positive relationship with ecological complexity echoing what was described in previous studies. However, this increase in ecological complexity resulted in an increase in competition which slowed down the accumulation of higher resources which in-turn affected the emergence of higher-level functions. This study further suggests that an increase in ecological complexity results in an increase in ecosystem stability, however more rigorous measures are needed to fully establish this link. Despite, the inherent abstractions that are present in the Avida system, it has provided valuable insights into the relationships between these ecological factors. The findings suggest that there is need for more future studies possibly looking at the resilience and recovery of these ecosystems as this would be critical for understanding and addressing the current biodiversity crisis.

Fungi play an important role, especially in boreal coniferous forests and peatlands. For example, they are responsible for the circulation of nutrients, and are an important part of forest vegetation, such as tree function and nutrient uptake. Drainage of peatlands for silvicultural purposes has increased over the years and forest management has been found to change the structure of fungal communities. In addition to clear-cutting (CC) as one of the forest management methods, the method of continuous cover forestry (CCF) has been proposed as one of the possible forest management methods, but its effects on the soil fungal community have not been extensively studied. The aims of this master's thesis were to study how the active soil fungal community and its structure vary between the different forest management methods (CC, CCF and uncut control forest) of the peatland forest in Janakkala and between the seasons (spring, summer and autumn). The active community was studied by taking RNA samples from the area in May, July, and September 2021. In addition, the goal was to examine how potential environmental factors such as soil temperature and groundwater variations affect the active fungal community. Overall, diversity was higher in the autumn in all samples. The most stable area was the control forest, where active community members varied between seasons, but where biodiversity was similar between samples in both spring and autumn. The results of the CCF site followed in many ways the uncut forest, but in the autumn, there were large differences in the biodiversity and community structure of the samples in the forest of the CCF site. The biodiversity of the CC area was high. This may be explained by the deforestation of young trees already formed at the time of sampling, which contributes to the return of for instance, mycorrhizal fungi to the area. It should also be noted that the full number of parallel samples from the CC site in the spring and the autumn were not successful. In addition, the summer samples failed completely and no results could be obtained from them. The failure of the samples may be explained by the long hot and dry period in the area in the summer of 2021.

Climate change and biodiversity loss are among the two most serious environmental issues humanity is currently facing. One way of mitigating climate change is to build more wind energy. In Finland, upcoming wind farms are going to increase the national wind energy capacity by almost tenfold. As more wind farms are built, helping in climate change mitigation, the negative biodiversity impacts caused by wind turbines are also increasing. Negative biodiversity effects caused by wind energy include habitat loss, avian mortalities, habitat fragmentation and avoidance behaviour in wildlife. This conflict where two desirable environmental goals have negative counter-effect on each other can be called green-green dilemma. This thesis looks at the biodiversity impacts on habitats caused by wind farms in Finland, and what would be the scale of a habitat tax paid for displacing natural habitat, that would help solve the green-green dilemma. This thesis utilizes geographical information system data of upcoming and in production wind farms and habitats to figure out which habitats are displaced by wind farms in Finland. Also, a wind farm level cost-benefit analysis was done for wind farms in production determine a scale of taxes, which would make 10 % or 25 % of wind farms with lowest net present value compared to habitat impact non-profitable. Two kinds of taxes were considered. Tax based on the quantity of habitat displaced, and a tax based on the quality of habitat displaced. For the determination of the quality of habitat, European red list of habitats was utilized in creation of a prioritization system for different habitats based on their endangerment category. With the prioritization system, each wind farm was given habitat points based on the habitats it was displacing. According to the results of the thesis, wind farms in Finland are mostly displacing woodland habitats. The second most common habitat displaced was marine habitats and the third most common were mires, bogs and fens. According to the prioritization system created for this thesis, most habitats displaced by wind farms are not considered threatened. Still, there should be some consideration about the habitats displaced by wind farms, as minority of habitats were considered threatened according to the prioritization system. Also, we cannot draw too many conclusions about the status of the habitats displaced as the prioritization system has flaws. The two different taxes looked in this thesis both ended up making mostly the same wind farms non-profitable, meaning there were outlier wind farms with low benefits with relatively high habitat impacts. Quantity of habitats-based tax which made 10 % of the wind farms non-profitable was 1.6 million euros per hectare of displaced habitat, and the higher tax rate making 25 % of the wind farms non-profitable was 2.5 million euros per hectare. The habitat quality-based tax was 510,000 € per habitat point for lower rate, and 750,000 € per habitat point for the higher rate. On average, quality tax in Finnish wind farms would be 1.75 million euros with the lower rate per hectare of habitat displaced, and 2.3 million euros per hectare with the higher rate according to the calculations in this thesis. Habitat tax can be one solution for solving the green-green dilemma. Taxes presented in this thesis are considerable higher than habitat restoration costs estimated for Finland, which are approximately between 8000 € and 15000 € per hectare, depending on the habitat restored. Still, a habitat tax needs to be high enough to have an impact on the economic decision making of wind farm developers. If a tax habitat tax would be implemented, it would be best to think about the desired effect of the tax, which will affect the scale of the tax. Also, all kinds of activities displacing natural habitat should be included in the tax, not just displacement caused by wind farms for the tax to be more comprehensive.