The importance and use of forest areas in local development

Forest areas and related resources are significant determinants of local development. Especially in regions characterized by considerable forest cover, the forest may constitute the basis and determine the pace and direction of socio-economic development. The study presents local development issues and discusses the diverse role and potential impact of the presence of forest areas on this development. The analysis of the scientific literature in this field allows us to conclude that this impact is highly significant, complex, and multifaceted and that conscious and responsible forest use planning can be the basis for the sustainable development of many territorial units.

The bioeconomy, carbon sinks, and depoliticization in Finnish forest politics

The forest bioeconomy in Finland has emerged as a project that seeks to resolve emergent contradictions in the capitalist ecological regime and to reconfigure spatial, temporal, and economic relations. The bioeconomy rose to public consciousness during the 2010s, especially after its adoption as one of the spearhead projects of the 2015–2019 center-right coalition government. The forest industry's bioeconomic plans are also an attempt to hegemonize and depoliticize a particular political view of forests in the era of climate change. In this paper, the politics of the bioeconomy and carbon sinks are scrutinized in the context of the 2019 parliamentary election season, during which forest use was a central political issue due to investments in new biorefineries. A data set of 80 newspaper articles is analyzed through critical discourse analysis. The analysis identifies three key discursive frames that legitimize the political imaginary of the bioeconomy: 1) rural reinvigoration and the defense of the nation's peripheries through spatial populism; 2) a view of forests as high-throughput carbon conveyors that conform to the temporalities of capital; 3) the establishment of the bioeconomy as a high-value accumulation regime that can resolve the profitability crisis of the paper and pulp production model.

Customary Forest Utilization: The Determinants of Indigenous (Adat) Community’s Economic Welfare

Customary forest utilization to improve the indigenous (adat) community welfare must be in line with local wisdom and preserving ecological function, even though they are no longer part of the state forest. In term of sustainable customary forest management, knowledge related to customary forest utilization and community welfare is getting significant to be study object. The paper aims to identify and analyse the determinants of indigenous community’s income. It was conducted in indigenous community of Kasepuhan Karang, Banten in 2018. Data collection was taken by purposive sampling, processed by ordinal logistic correlation and descriptive analysis. The results show the indigenous community has high level of dependence on the forest through on and off farm. From the respondents, the average income from forest use is below the regional minimum wage. While from the partial test results, it is concluded the land owned area and the livelihood type have a significant positive effect on the income level. Therefore, land distribution should be well managed due to conservation issue and livelihoods diversification to increase income level. Nonetheless, formal education level undetermined on income level. Informal education, capacity building of the community regarding to sustainable customary forest management needs to be organized.

The determinants of forest land prices

The authors discuss the peculiarities of price formation for forest land as a renewable plant natural resource. Forest plots are regarded as a forest resource that can be used in two ways: as a natural object and as a source of wood raw materials. The absolute forest rent for forest areas with standing trees, adjusted for economic, environmental, and social factors, serves as the pricing basis. The authors propose creating differentiated regional price lists for forest plots and methodological approaches to pricing forest plots with different types of forest use to substantiate the forest tax and tax base.

DEPLATION CHARACTER OF FOREST MANAGMENT IN THE LEASED LAND OF THE IRBIT FORESTRY

Истощительное экстенсивное лесопользование на арендованном участке – актуальная проблема лесного хозяйства. Современная практика показывает, что лесопользователь, руководствуясь экономическими показателями с целью получения большей прибыли, не ведет заготовку в малопро- дуктивных насаждениях, а осваивает высокопродуктивные насаждения с высокими запасами на 1 га. Такая ситуация приводит к невыполнению мероприятий по воспроизводству лесов в полном объеме и к истощению лесов. Методы определения расчетных лесосек не отвечают принципам непрерывно- сти и неистощительности на лесных участках. Срок использования эксплуатационного фонда зачастую не соответствует срокам договора аренды. В документах лесного планирования необходимо приводить динамику заготовки древесины и изменения возрастной структуры насаждений на срок аренды. Фонд лесовосстановления превышает по площади ежегодный объем вырубок из-за освоения высокобонитет- ных насаждений. Один из способов для перехода к интенсивной модели лесопользования – это внесение изменений в организацию расчета лесопользования на арендованных лесных участках. The depletion of extensive forest use on a leased plot is an actual problem of forestry. Modern practice shows that the forest user, guided by economic indicators in order to obtain more profit, does not harvest in low-productive plantations, but develops highly productive plantations with high reserves per 1 ha. This situation leads to the failure to implement measures for the reproduction of forests in full and to the depletion of forests. The methods for determining the calculated cutting areas do not meet the principles of continuity and sustainability in forest areas. The term of use of the operating fund often does not correspond to the terms of the lease agreement. In the forest planning documents, it is necessary to give the dynamics of wood harvesting and changes in the age structure of plantings for the lease period. The reforestation fund exceeds the annual volume of deforestation by area due to the development of high-priority plantations. One of the ways to switch to an intensive model of forest management is to make changes to the organization of the calculation of forest use on the designated forest areas.

Forest Husbandry in the Khabarovsk Territory: Environmental Risks and Ways of Addressing Them

The Khabarovsk Territory is characterized by considerable reserves of the forest resources. Their share is 18 % of the forested area of the Far Eastern Federal District and 25 % of the timber reserves. In the region, the forestry sector is the branch of national economic specialization which is associated with the export orientation of the forestry products. In this paper, the factors that determine environmental risks during logging are analyzed, including a low level of control of felling, violations of technologies, rules and standards for felling in the main-use forests, an increase in a fire hazard, violation of the hydrological regime of rivers, the development of erosion processes, pollution of aquatic ecosystems, expansion of road networks, increased poaching pressure on previously inaccessible forest areas, etc. Environmental problems caused by these factors are associated with a decrease in the resources, the ecological functions and the biological diversity of forests, the destruction of possibilities for traditional forest management, and the destruction and transformation of historically formed ecosystems. An unbiased inventory of the forest resources, their quantity and quality assessment, a governmental monitoring of the state of forest ecosystems, support for alternative types of forest use (recreational, tourist, etc.) are of paramount importance in solving these problems.

Biovera-Epi: A new database on species diversity, community composition and leaf functional traits of vascular epiphytes along gradients of elevation and forest-use intensity in Mexico

This data paper describes a new, comprehensive database (BIOVERA-Epi) on species distributions and leaf functional traits of vascular epiphytes, a poorly studied plant group, along gradients of elevation and forest-use intensity in the central part of Veracruz State, Mexico. The distribution data include frequencies of 271 vascular epiphyte species belonging to 92 genera and 23 families across 120 20 m × 20 m forest plots at eight study sites along an elevational gradient from sea level to 3500 m a.s.l. In addition, BIOVERA-Epi provides information on 1595 measurements of nine morphological and chemical leaf traits from 474 individuals and 102 species. For morphological leaf traits, we provide data on each sampled leaf. For chemical leaf traits, we provide data at the species level per site and land-use type. We also provide complementary information for each of the sampled plots and host trees. BIOVERA-Epi contributes to an emerging body of synthetic epiphytes studies combining functional traits and community composition. BIOVERA-Epi includes data on species frequency and leaf traits from 120 forest plots distributed along an elevational gradient, including six different forest types and three levels of forest-use intensity. It will expand the breadth of studies on epiphyte diversity, conservation and functional plant ecology in the Neotropics and will contribute to future synthetic studies on the ecology and diversity of tropical epiphyte assemblages.

Long-term forecast of forest ecosystem services under different forest use scenarios

Sustainable forest management presupposes a long-term strategic planning of status and use of all forest resources and ecosystem services. The results of long-term scenario modelling can form the basis for decision-making. The paper contains the discussion of the results of scenario modelling run with the FORRUS-S imitational model for the period of 125 years and the rent forest plot with the area of 19,800 ha. Three scenarios of management activities differing in volumes of harvested timber, reforestation, and thinning were implemented. The effect of forest use scenarios on tree species composition, structural indices of forest ecosystems, volumes of food resources, and recreational potential was examined. The scenario envisaging a complete use of permissible harvesting volume and reforestation with no thinnings proved to be the most disastrous for aforementioned ecosystem services, including timber harvesting. The intensive forest use scenario envisaging artificial reforestation and complete cycle of thinnings causes the least negative effect on the volumes of food resources and even increases their diversity. Recreational ecosystem services degrade with increasing intensity of forest use. As a result, the forest user receives several scenarios; the choice of the optimal one for the user depends on the demand for concrete resources or ecosystem services.