To create sustainable forestry to store carbon, adapt to a changing climate and contribute to biodiversity, employment, and recreation

Clearcutting is used in 80% of cultivated forests where all trees are felled simultaneously.

This practice results in carbon dioxide emissions, loss of soil organic carbon, water pollution and reduced biodiversity, and increased vulnerability of forests to extreme weather and pests.

In continuous cover forestry, trees are selectively felled, enabling natural regrowth, reduces carbon dioxide emissions, supporting biodiversity, recreation and reindeer husbandry, and increasing resistance to extreme weather and pests.

In the long term, both systems have similar capacities for carbon dioxide absorption, but with clear-cutting it takes 25-30-years to recover the capture capacity, challenging Sweden´s climate goals for 2030.

Continuous cover forestry can be profitable for forest owners and can create more jobs in rural areas through higher labor needs and increased local value creation.Through co-creation between researchers and stakeholders, the project creates a scenario and a roadmap for how continuous cover forestry and complementary measures can contribute to several global sustainability goals.

The cross-disciplinary expertise among partners and engaged consultants together with a wide range of stakeholder perspectives across the forestry field and relevant value chains provide opportunities to create solutions that are realistic, widely agreed and useful to many relevant stakeholders in the forest industry, and therefore likely to be used after the project.