Climate-resilient forest management

Climate change affects Finnish forests and forestry. Climate-resilient forest management choices can ensure the ability of forests to adapt to changing climate conditions and mitigate climate change. Climate resilience can be promoted in many ways.

Forests’ ability to adapt to climate change and its impacts can be ensured through timely measures that comply with forest management recommendations. Healthy, viable and diverse forests are able to recover well from natural disturbances and, at the same time, provide habitats for diverse species.

Climate change can be mitigated by sequestering and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and by avoiding new emissions into the atmosphere and water bodies. Growing forests sequester carbon from the atmosphere and therefore play an important role in mitigating climate change. It is also important to pay attention to soil carbon reservoirs and minimising emissions, especially in swamp forests.

Carbon storage can be continued in forests or wood-based products. Wood-based products can also substitute for fossil raw materials and fuels. In Finland, the substitution effect is clearly greater than the amount of carbon annually sequestered in wood products.

The Finnish climate is predicted to change in several ways, including that

• average temperatures will rise, especially in winter, and extreme cold periods will become less frequent
• summer heat waves will become more common and longer lasting
• precipitation will increase, especially in winter, and heavy summer rains will intensify
• winters will become more cloudy
• snow cover period will shorten, and snow thickness will decrease.

Climate change will increase the growth of trees, as the growing season is prolonged, and there is more carbon dioxide in the air to be used by trees. The growth of trees is likely to increase especially in Northern Finland.

Increased forest damage may partially offset the climate change–driven growth of trees. The risks include, in particular, drought, insect and fungal damage, snow damage, as well as damage to forest stands and their secondary effects caused by fluctuating weather conditions.

Each forest owner can influence the forests’ ability to adapt to climate change.

The adaptation methods used in forest management strengthen forests in a changing climate and improve their resilience against extreme weather phenomena and various types of damage. This is important because adaptation ensures forests’ ability to produce wellbeing also in the future.

Read below for strategies from the different areas of adaptation.

Knowing your forests

You can utilise the Finnish Forest Centre’s open forest and nature data and the Metsään.fi service to get to know your forests. Spatial datasets help to identify risk sites and implement timely and risk-sensitive forest management.

As a forest owner, it is important to regularly monitor the situation of your forests also in the terrain. When you know your forests, you can assess how the growth conditions will change in the future and prepare for damage in advance.

Further reading:

• Metsään.fi (in Finnish)
• Open forest and nature data products (in Finnish)

Forest regeneration

You can consider climate change adaptation in the regeneration by

• selecting tree species by site and soil type
• avoiding spruce growing in places with poor soil
• using regionally adapted improved planting material
• utilising natural regeneration material in mixed stands and seed crop forecasts in natural regeneration.

Long-term weather forecasts should be monitored, for example, when planning the timing of sowing and planting. With regeneration felling, you can change the main tree species, for example, in a forest with root rot.

Further reading: Regeneration and regeneration fellings

Young stand management and thinning 

You can maintain the damage resilience of a stand with timely young stand management and thinning. In connection with management and thinning, you can make choices on the density of forest cultivation, the proportion of tree species and mixed trees, which reduce the risk of tree damage.

Young stand management

With timely young stand management, trees maintain their vitality and become sturdier faster, making them less vulnerable to snow and wind damage in the future.

The results of young stand management are long-term, which means that good management also has a significant impact on the future possibilities for further processing of wood.

As the risk of root rot will increase as a result of climate change, its prevention should be considered in conifer-dominated sapling stands.

Thinning

Delaying thinnings may increase the risk of forest damage. With timely first thinning, you can avoid etiolation caused by excessive density in young stands.

In young managed stands, etiolation increases the risk of snow damage, in particular, and in mature stands, the risk of wind damage.

Further reading: 

• Managing young stands
• Silvicultural methods and intermediate fellings
• Promote mixed stands and preserve tree species diversity (in Finnish)
• Combating root rot (in Finnish)

Timber harvesting and storage

Decreasing snow thickness and shorter frost periods make harvesting more difficult, especially on peatlands and in areas that cannot be accessed unless the ground is frozen.

Spatial datasets and long-term weather forecasts on soil load-bearing capacity and moisture will help in the planning of timber harvesting. The trunk and root damage in trees can be avoided by careful planning and implementation of harvesting.

By complying with the obligations laid down in the Forest Damages Prevention Act, you can reduce the risk of insect and fungal damage to growing trees.

Further reading: Forest regulation

Remedial fertilisation

With remedial fertilisation, you can ensure the vitality of forest stand by preventing or correcting growth disturbances caused by nutrient deficiency in the soil. In practice, remedial fertilisation in forests refers to ash fertilisation in swamp forests or boron fertilisation in mineral soils.

Further reading: Forest fertilisation (in Finnish)

Water management and swamp forest management

Water protection and water management arrangements can be used to ensure water management in the event of droughts, heavy rainfall and floods, and to minimise the impacts of forest management on water systems.

It is essential to avoid digging unnecessary and too deep ditches, utilise trees in groundwater surface regulation and make use of effective water protection solutions. Forest management loading in waters can be significantly reduced by careful drainage basin level planning and by ensuring sufficient water protection structures.

Further reading: Management of swamp forests

Safeguarding biodiversity

Safeguarding biodiversity facilitates the ecosystem’s climate change adaptation. Nature management in commercial forests plays a key role in safeguarding forest biodiversity, as most of our forests are commercial forests. The more diverse our forests are, the better they can adapt to climate change.

Further reading: Nature management methods in commercial forests (in Finnish)

Maintenance of forest roads

Good condition of forest roads is a prerequisite for forest management measures and year-round timber transport. Forest roads also improve the accessibility of forests, for example, when extinguishing wildfires.

Climate change causes additional problems for the road network, as shorter winter frost periods and the increasing rainfall in late autumn and early winter cause worse and longer-lasting frost heave damage, especially on poorly maintained forest roads. To maintain forest roads, it is important to ensure the maintenance and renovation of roads, culverts and bridges, especially considering their load-bearing capacity.

Further reading: Private roads

Forests play an important role in climate change mitigation. Forest owners have at their disposal several forest management methods to mitigate climate change. The selection of methods enables the multi-objective use of forests and versatile implementation of the objectives, in accordance with the properties of the site and the forest owner's objectives.

Climate change can be mitigated through

• maintaining and increasing forest carbon sequestration
• sequestering and storing carbon in trees and soil
• avoiding new emissions to the atmosphere and water bodies 
• producing renewable raw material.

Carbon storage can be continued both in forests and in wood-based products. Wood-based products can also substitute for fossil raw materials. In Finland, the substitution effect is clearly greater than the amount of carbon annually sequestered in wood products. For example, wood-based fuels have been used to replace fossil fuels and peat in Finland.

Mitigation measures for different time scales

Climate change-mitigating forest management measures operate on different time scales, some in the short term and others in the long term.

Different operating models for forest owners at property level 

The overall impact of forests and wood use on greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere depends on how forests are managed and utilised, as well as how the harvested raw material is used.

Forest owners can emphasise different operating models in forest management:

• Efficient wood production and carbon sequestration (carbon in products)
• Carbon storage in forest stand and soil, considering the damage risks (carbon in the forest)
• Balance, in which no objective is pursued to an extreme (balance of objectives)

More information on the Finnish Forest Centre website

• Forest damage
• Sustainable forest management
• Forestry subsidies (in Finnish)

Forest management recommendations

• Forest management recommendations: Climate change mitigation and adaptation (in Finnish)
• Forest management recommendations: Prioritising the forest owner’s objectives in forest management (in Finnish)
• Forest management recommendations: Climate-resilient forest management (in Finnish)

Forest Climate Resilience online training series

Are you interested in climate-resilient forest management? The Forest Climate Resilience online training series provides forest owners with further information on the climate resilience of forests. The online training series describes various measures that can be taken to improve forest adaptation to the risks posed by climate change. In addition, the course provides information on climate change mitigation through forest management.
Forest Climate Resilience online training series (in Finnish)

Climate Smart Forest Management info card series

• How can you influence the climate resilience of forests? (in Finnish)
• Open areas and young stands (in Finnish)
• Forest cultivation (in Finnish)
• Regeneration-ready forests (in Finnish)