Scientific and Applied Research

In 2020 LIFE-IP project “Comprehensive management of forest and farming landscapes to improve the conservation status of Natura 2000 habitats and species” (ForEst&FarmLand) was launched, involving all key players from universities, forestry sector and nature conservation as well as NGOs to jointly protect and restore Estonian landscapes and ecosystems and to improve the condition of the species and habitats in Estonian forests and agricultural lands.

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The scientific problem in this project is the necessary conditions for socio-ecologically balanced land use. We investigate how diverse factors affect stable multi-functional land-use within production landscapes, specifically, land-sharing (local semi-natural) modes of land use in forests, meadows, and wetlands. We combine empirical measurements with simulation modelling to understand how (probabilistic) decisions of individual land-owners and managers produce land-use patterns under alternative and dynamic land-governance rules. These land-use patterns, in turn, are related to production and ecosystem service outputs in different time frames. The project informs land-use policies by (1) identifying critical (possibly alternative) leverage points in governance that could direct land-use towards more balanced and stable states, (2) describing the role of semi-natural land-use and ecological restoration in such states, and (3) developing decision support tools for such governance.

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About 10% of the global terrestrial carbon pool is stored in dead wood in forest ecosystems. Yet, for improving forest carbon storage, mostly rapid tree growth and large stocks of live trees is promoted. A little explored alternative is accumulating more carbon in dead wood by decelerating decomposition, which also could benefit forest biodiversity. Our overall aim is to understand the ecological limits of manipulating dead wood decomposition, and its potential impact on the carbon storage. For this, we will measure where, and why, dead wood decomposes slowly in forest, and how to facilitate that in situ. We will perform a series of chronosequence measurements and field experiments to analyse the effects of moisture conditions, decomposer assemblages and dead wood characteristics on decomposition rates in different time perspectives. Our results will provide a novel view to climate change mitigation, complementing the existing options available in forest management and conservation.

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