Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2023
Authors
Jo Jorem AarsethAbstract
In northern Norway, an increasing population of Greylag Geese (Anser anser) forages considerably on dairy grassland and can eat up to 60% of the grass (dry matter mass) on a field if allowed to eat undisturbed throughout the growing season. In this study, the seasonal foraging behavior of Greylag Geese on diary grassland was continuously monitored with game cameras from late April to the end of August to be able to pinpoint effective preventive measures to manage, control, and prevent this crop damage. Limited, but regular, lethal scaring was conducted on some fields to reveal the preventive effect of this measure. Foraging from Greylag Geese in a rangeland area was also monitored, and a complete dataset of seasonal foraging behavior of this species is presented here. Greylag Geese foraging on the fields reaches a top between 04:00 and 08:00 h am, all season. Energy and digestibility of the field grass (timothy) did not reveal any correlation with grazing patterns. Greylag Geese do not visit the fields during molting; however, they may visit fields with their chicks to forage. Lethal scaring completely removes visits from Greylag Geese on the fields where this is conducted, while foraging continues if geese are given undisturbed access. In the rangeland area foraging seems to be even and continuous throughout the season, but significantly lower. In the end of June and late July/early August, there is a peak in visits and number of geese per visit on the fields. Preventive and effective measures against crop damage from Greylag Geese must therefore at least be initiated during late June and early August, and between 04:00 and 08:00 am.
Authors
Mireia Pecurul-Botines Laura Secco Laura Bouriaud Alex Giurca Maria Brockhaus Vilis Brukas Marjanke Hoogstra-Klein Agata Konczal Lenka Marcinekova Krzysztof Niedzialkowski Knut Øistad Špela Pezdevšek Malovrh Niina Pietarinen Jeanne-Lazya Roux Bernhard Wolfslehner Georg WinkelAbstract
What is at stake? The new Forest Strategy for 2030 for the European Union (EU) was adopted in July 2021, creating a new drive for forest policymaking on an EU level. Its main reference is the European Green Deal that puts forests in the light of a decarbonised society until 2050, and emphasises carbon sequestration, biodiversity protection, and forest restoration. The strategy aims to improve the quality and quantity of EU forests, enhance their multifunctionality and resilience, and address challenges linked to the increasing strain on forests through human activities and natural processes, including climate change. The Strategy’s priorities include: 1. supporting the socio-economic forest functions and boosting bioeconomy within its sustainability boundaries; 2. protecting, restoring and enlarging forests in the EU; 3. ensuring a strategic forest monitoring, reporting and data collection and 4. encouraging dialogue and stakeholder engagement. Compared to earlier versions, the new EU Forest Strategy has become more concrete and comprehensive in its vision and tries to tie in different objectives of the plethora of EU forest-related policies (such as e.g., bioeconomy enhancement, biodiversity protection, climate mitigation and adaptation etc.). The implementation of the new EU Forest Strategy and meeting its goals has therefore potentially larger implications for national authorities than earlier ones, through its stronger embedding in the overall political framework of the EU, although the Strategy as such is not legally binding. What are the study’s aims? This study assesses whether and to what extent national and regional policy developments meet the EU Forest Strategy goals. It analyses those policies in 15 countries in and outside the EU, as well as in three regions in Spain. The countries are: Austria (AT), Czech Republic (CZ), Finland (FI), Germany (DE), Ireland (IE), Italy (IT), Lithuania (LT), the Netherlands (NL), Norway (NO), Poland (PL), Romania (RO), Slovakia (SK), Slovenia (SI), Spain (ES), and Sweden (SE). Although not a member of the EU, Norway was included into this study as it is closely related through the EEA agreement and a bilateral agreement on cooperation with the EU to fulfil the 2030 climate target. What patterns emerge? There is a striking diversity of socio-economic, environmental and political settings for forests and forestry in Europe and even within countries, which affect the impact of the Forest Strategy. Differences related to both ecological site conditions (determining the type of forest), basic socioeconomic factors (such as ownership), societal demands and needs as well as private sector interests, and urban or rural forest settings determine past and current forest governance and management practices in European countries. At the same time, there are common issues for forest governance and management across Europe, relating to: • a considerable divide of forestry and conservation interests found in all studied countries; • the increasing impact of climate change and related forest disturbances (with regionally different consequences for forests and forestry); and • the embeddedness of European forest governance and markets within larger structures, for example related to (global) energy and resource trade and investment patterns. Other patterns relate to ‘silences’ in member states’ policies, e.g., missing references to forest-sector specific internal threats to biodiversity, as well as to the risk (and reality) of conversion of old growth forests, or missing action and strategies to collect data that is not (yet) part of ‘traditional’ monitoring and reporting activities and systems. ...........................
Abstract
The materials used in construction have a significant environmental impact and this is becoming more important as operational energy requirements continue to fall. It is therefore becoming increasingly important to take into account the environmental burdens associated with materials used in construction. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) are useful tools for this purpose. When comparing the results of numerous LCA studies of different construction materials, the main question is often ‘Which material is better for the environment?’. The answer, however, is usually not as simple – but why is it so difficult to decide which material has the lowest environmental impact? To answer this question, we have to consider what life cycle assessment is and how an LCA is undertaken. The report covers the stages of an LCA, from defining the goal and scope of the respective study to the creation of the life cycle inventory (LCI), the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) to the reporting and interpretation of the results. Additionally, the report goes in detail into how to approach published LCA studies, how to work with EPDs and the much-discussed issue of Carbon storage in buildings. In the final chapter, the report assesses the comparability of published studies evaluating the environmental impact of different building materials.
Abstract
Extractives from silver birch (Betula pendula) can play an important role in the future bioeconomy by delivering the feedstock, for instance, for antioxidative applications. It is, therefore, inevitable to gain knowledge of the distribution of extractive content and composition in the different tissues of the tree for estimating the potential volumes of valuable extractable compounds. This study examines the extractable compound distribution of different tree tissues such as outer and inner bark and wood, respectively, considering the original height of the stem and comparing the yields after Soxhlet and accelerated solvent extraction (ASE). Eleven parts of the model tree (seven stem discs and four branches) were separated into primary tissues and extracted with a ternary solvent system. The investigated extraction methods resulted in a comparable performance regarding yields and the composition of the extractives. The extractives were divided into single compounds such as betulin, lupeol, γ-sitosterol, and lupeone and substance groups such as carbohydrates, terpenes, aromatics, and other groups. The distribution of single substances and substance groups depends on the location and function of the examined tissues. Furthermore, the evidence for the correlation of a single substance’s location and original tree height is stronger for lupeol than for betulin. Primary betulin sources of the calculated betulin output are the outer bark of the stem and the branches. By using small branches, further potential for the extraction of betulin can be utilized. A model calculation of the betulin content in the current birch tree revealed a significant potential of 23 kg of betulin available as a valuable chemical resource after by-product utilization.
Abstract
Monitoring and managing Earth’s forests in an informed manner is an important requirement for addressing challenges like biodiversity loss and climate change. While traditional in situ or aerial campaigns for forest assessments provide accurate data for analysis at regional level, scaling them to entire countries and beyond with high temporal resolution is hardly possible. In this work, we propose a method based on deep ensembles that densely estimates forest structure variables at country-scale with 10-m resolution, using freely available satellite imagery as input. Our method jointly transforms Sentinel-2 optical images and Sentinel-1 syntheticaperture radar images into maps of five different forest structure variables: 95th height percentile, mean height, density, Gini coefficient, and fractional cover. We train and test our model on reference data from 41 airborne laser scanning missions across Norway and demonstrate that it is able to generalize to unseen test regions, achieving normalized mean absolute errors between 11% and 15%, depending on the variable. Our work is also the first to propose a variant of so-called Bayesian deep learning to densely predict multiple forest structure variables with well-calibrated uncertainty estimates from satellite imagery. The uncertainty information increases the trustworthiness of the model and its suitability for downstream tasks that require reliable confidence estimates as a basis for decision making. We present an extensive set of experiments to validate the accuracy of the predicted maps as well as the quality of the predicted uncertainties. To demonstrate scalability, we provide Norway-wide maps for the five forest structure variables.
Authors
Stefano PulitiAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Stefano PulitiAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Kjersti Holt Hanssen Viktor J. Bruckman Michael Gundale Aigars Indriksons Morten Ingerslev Marju Kaivapalu Dagnija Lazdina Kristaps Makovskis Adam O’Toole Katri Ots Marjo Palviainen Jogeir N. Stokland Iveta Varnagiryte-KabasinskieneAbstract
This report summarizes the status of biochar in forestry in the Nordic-Baltic countries today. Biochar is charred material formed by pyrolysis of organic materials. In addition to improving soil physical and chemical properties and plant growth, biochar is a promising negative emission technology for storing carbon (C) in soils. The report gives an overview of current and potential uses, production methods and facilities, legislation, current and future research as well as biochar properties and effects. Forests are both a source of feedstock for biochar production and a potential beneficiary for biochar use. Production is still limited in the Nordic-Baltic countries, but commercial production is on the rise and several enterprises are in the planning or start-up phase. In this report different biochar production technologies are described. As the (modern) use of biochar for agricultural and especially forestry purposes is relatively new, in many countries there are no specific legislation regulating its use. Sometimes the use of biochar is regulated through more general laws and regulations on e.g. fertilizers or soil amendment. However, both inside and outside EU several documents and standards exist, listing recommended physical and chemical limit values for biochar. So far, most biochar studies have been conducted on agricultural soils, though research in the forestry sector is starting to emerge. The first biochar field experiments in boreal forests support that wood biochar promotes tree growth. Also, studies on the use of biochar as an additive to the growing medium in tree nurseries show promising results. Because biochar C content is high, it is recalcitrant to decomposition, and application rates to soil can be high, biochar is a promising tool to enhance the C sequestration in boreal forests. However, available biomass and production costs may be barriers for the climate change mitigation potential of biochar. When it comes to effects on biodiversity, few field-based studies have been carried out. Some studies from the Nordic region show that biochar addition may affect microbial soil communities and vegetation, at least on a short time scale. There is clearly a need for more research on the effects of biochar in forestry in the Nordic-Baltic region. Long-term effects of biochar on e.g., forest growth, biodiversity, soil carbon and climate change mitigation potential should be studied in existing and new field experiments.
Authors
Unni Støbet LandeAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Fride Høistad ScheiAbstract
No abstract has been registered