The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, The Faculty of Forest Science

The Faculty of Forest Sciences (established 1828) is the principal actor in Swedish forestry research with its main campus in the boreal forest region of Umeå. It has a Unit for Field-based Forest Research, which coordinates activities at eight experimental forests, the oldest established in 1921, and several hundred long-term experiments. The Faculty is also responsible for the Swedish National Forest Inventory (NFI), which produces the official forest statistics on the state and changes of the forest resources in Sweden. A new major task for the NFI is the carbon accounting and reporting – a requirement for all signatories of the Kyoto Protocol.

These whole-tree chambers, at Flakaliden in Northern Sweden, with CO2 and temperature control, are used for studies of the impacts of elevated air temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentrations on 40-year-old Norway spruce trees

The boreal forest, the second most extensive terrestrial biome on Earth, constitutes roughly one-third of the global forested areas (1.4 billion hectares). These forests are key to the survival and development of societies in the boreal region. Any impacts of climate change on these ecosystems may have pronounced local effects, but are also of global significance. There are vast areas of wetlands and soils with permafrost where climatic change will change soil conditions and forest vegetation and hence the water and carbon balance over very large areas. Even small changes in greenhouse gas balances will have large effects.

On the political agenda

Boreal forests are also increasingly a high-profile topic on the international political agenda. Many areas in the boreal zone are seen as virgin and untouched old-growth forests, which are extremely important to protect and preserve. The ecological importance is highly valued and an improved understanding of the biotic and abiotic impact on the dynamics in the boreal forests is a necessary prerequisite for determining the possibility and potential for their sustainable development as well as their role in mitigating climate change.

	The Unit for Field-based Forest Research provides long-term continuity in the study of forest stands, vegetation, wildlife, soil, water and climatic conditions

Forest utilisation and forest management in Sweden has a long tradition, which has been regulated for centuries. The latest revision of the Forestry Act in 1994 gave production and conservation goals equal importance. The Act sets out the demands on forest owners. These include the wood production levels that must be attained and the considerations for nature conservation and cultural heritage. This change in emphasis has, together with a number of international conventions and agreements, had a major impact on current research and training of forestry students. For example, the graduate research school, CarbonSweden, has been established to ensure that Sweden will have the highest competence, internationally, in carbon management.

Understanding ecosystems

Concerns over human impacts on climate, as well as other anthropogenic effects on ecosystems, have heightened the need for a more comprehensive and predictive understanding of ecosystem dynamics and development. This requires a better understanding of the complex interactions between climate, element cycling and organisms. Our ability to understand how these interactions manifest and cross spatial and temporal scales must increase. These questions are of high priority to the Faculty. During the last decade a number of long-term and large-scale projects have been started to study the likely impacts of climate change on Swedish forest ecosystems and to assess different strategies for carbon mitigation, in terms of changes in land-use and management, as well as increased biomass production and utilisation of forest products for biofuels. One task is to evaluate the role of forest soils as a carbon sink and the impact of current and modified silvicultural practices on net fluxes of greenhouse gases and how integrated strategies for modified land-use and adaptive silviculture could reduce the emissions of these gases into the atmosphere.

A central experimental site, established 1987, is Flakaliden (64°07’N, 19°27’E), with long-term manipulation experiments in a boreal Norway spruce forest. Unique facilities for related experiments have been installed there. A soil warming experiment started in 1995, and twelve whole-tree chambers with CO2 - and temperature control have been used to study the impact of climate change on field-grown mature trees. The long-term manipulation experiments provide excellent opportunities for teaching and for national and international scientists to study climatic and nutritional impacts on structure and function of a boreal forest and to test and validate process-based simulation models.

We also need better tools for planning future use of forests. The research programme, Heureka, is developing computer-based tools for forest analysis and planning. All important utilities, derived from forest ecosystems, should be considered simultaneously in analyses and planning, where the concept utility is a collective term for goods and services produced by forests.

W: www.sfak.slu.se