Landscape Approach towards Integrated Conservation and Use of Primeval Forests: The Transboundary Kovda River Catchment in Russia and Finland

Abstract

<jats:p>Regional clear-felling of naturally dynamic boreal forests has left remote forest landscapes in northern Europe with challenges regarding rural development based on wood mining. However, biodiversity conservation with higher levels of ambition than what is possible in regions with a long forest history, and cultural heritage, offer opportunities for developing new value chains that support rural development. We explored the opportunities for pro-active integrated spatial planning based on: (i) landscapes’ natural and cultural heritage values in the transboundary Kovda River catchment in Russia and Finland; (ii) forest canopy loss as a threat; and (iii) private, public and civil sector stakeholders’ views on the use and non-use values at local to international levels. After a 50-year history of wood mining in Russia, the remaining primeval forest and cultural heritage remnants are located along the pre-1940 Finnish-Russian border. Forest canopy loss was higher in Finland (0.42%/year) than in Russia (0.09%/year), and decreased from the south to the north in both countries. The spatial scales of stakeholders’ use of forest landscapes ranged from stand-scale to the entire catchment of Kovda River in Russia and Finland (~2,600,000 ha). We stress the need to develop an integrated landscape approach that includes: (i) forest landscape goods; (ii) other ecosystem services and values found in intact forest landscapes; and (iii) adaptive local and regional forest landscape governance. Transboundary collaboration offers opportunities for effective knowledge production and learning.</jats:p>

Maintaining natural and traditional cultural green infrastructures across Europe: learning from historic and current landscape transformations

“…Differences in annual forest canopy loss rate between each regional and their respective hotspot landscape indicate higher or lower than average forest management intensities. Nevertheless, forest canopy loss rates mirror trends and differences in forest management intensity (Angelstam et al 2017a(Angelstam et al , 2020bJonsson et al 2019).…”

“…This study thus highlights that there are many types of land covers that need to be considered in GI planning and maintenance, and that these relate to several different contexts for GI maintenance on the European continent. Pan-European regions thus range from the last large intact forest landscapes (Potapov et al 2017) in northern Fennoscandia (Jonsson et al 2019) and NW Russia (Angelstam et al 2020b) to severely fragmented forests in Western Europe and the Mediterranean. They also range from traditional multi-functional rural cultural landscapes in the European continent's economic peripheries (Butlin and Dodgshon 1998) to intensively managed ones with a mono-culture approach (EEA 2006).…”

“…Thus, the main concern is that SPB fulfil no ecological function, but crisscross ecosystems that become subject to the influence of different governance institutions, programmes and strategies (Dallimer and Strange 2015). The differences regarding the management system, the attitudes and values that the human communities develop on the sides of the borders impact the conservation practices and instruments that should have a common ground as they deal with one and the same ecosystem that extends beyond certain SPBs (Angelstam et al 2020b).…”

“…The transformation of near-natural forest remnants to intensively managed boreal forest (e.g., Jonsson et al 2016Jonsson et al , 2019Svensson et al 2019), as well as of traditional cultural wooded landscapes to tree plantations, intensive agriculture or urban areas (Burrascano et al 2016;Manton and Angelstam 2018;Bobiec et al 2019), thus continues. However, traditional multifunctional forest and woodland management approaches through which both timber and non-timber products are delivered simultaneously together with other ecosystem services, including immaterial landscape values, are also important for the development and enhancement of non-wood value chains (Blanco et al 1997;Jonsson et al 2019;Angelstam et al 2020b). For example, reforestations made in Spain in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries to control erosion, became protected areas a century later [i.e., Sierra Espuña, in SE Spain (Vallejo 2005)], and areas where transitions from wood to non-wood products have contributed to stabilize declining rural populations [i.e., Tierra de Pinares in Central-North Spain (Segur 2014)].…”

Assessment and Spatial Planning for Peatland Conservation and Restoration: Europe’s Trans-Border Neman River Basin as a Case Study

“…Westbrook and Noble [41] called for strategic planning to assess and manage the impacts on wetlands by adopting an approach that integrates science and land use planning to provide clear directions for implementing policy and land use plans on-the-ground. A foundation of conservation planning is integrated assessment, and communication about the states and trends of different dimensions of peatlands [42,43].…”