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Responsible forest management requires accounting for adverse environmental effects, such as increased nutrient export to water courses. We constructed a spatially-distributed nutrient balance model NutSpaFHy that extends the hydrological model SpaFHy by introducing a grid-based nutrient balance sub-model and a conceptual solute transport routine to approximate total nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) export to streams. NutSpaFHy uses openly-available Multi-Source National Forest Inventory data, soil maps, topographic databases, location of water bodies, and meteorological variables as input, and computes nutrient processes in monthly time-steps. NutSpaFHy contains two calibrated parameters both for N and P, which were optimized against measured N and P concentrations in runoff from twelve forested catchments distributed across Finland. NutSpaFHy was independently tested against six catchments. The model produced realistic nutrient exports. For one catchment, we simulated 25 scenarios, where clear-cuts were located differently with respect to distance to water body, location on mineral or peat soil, and on sites with different fertility. Results indicate that NutSpaFHy can be used to identify current and future nutrient export hot spots, allowing comparison of logging scenarios with variable harvesting area, location and harvest techniques, and to identify acceptable scenarios that preserve the wood supply whilst maintaining acceptable level of nutrient export.

We quantified the response of peatland water table level (WTL) and energy fluxes to harvesting of a drained peatland forest. Two alternative harvests (clear-cut and partial harvest) were carried out in a mixed-species ditch-drained peatland forest in southern Finland, where water and energy balance components were monitored for six pre-treatment and three post-treatment growing seasons. To explore the responses caused by harvestings, we applied a mechanistic multi-layer soil-plant-atmosphere transfer model. At the clear-cut site, the mean growing season WTL rose by 0.18 +/- 0.02 m (error estimate based on measurement uncertainty), while net radiation, and sensible and latent heat fluxes decreased after harvest. On the contrary, we observed only minor changes in energy fluxes and mean WTL (0.05 +/- 0.03 m increase) at the partial harvest site, although as much as 70% of the stand basal area was removed and leaf-area index was reduced to half. The small changes were mainly explained by increased water use of spruce undergrowth and field layer vegetation, as well as increased forest floor evaporation. The rapid establishment of field layer vegetation had a significant role in energy balance recovery at the clear-cut site. At partial harvest, chlorophyll fluorescence measurements and model-data comparison suggested the shade-adapted spruce undergrowth was suffering from light stress during the first post-harvest growing season. We conclude that in addition to stand basal area, species composition and stand structure need to be considered when controlling WTL in peatland forests with partial harvesting. Our results have important implications on the operational use of continuous cover forestry on drained peatlands. A continuously maintained tree cover with significant evapotranspiration capacity could enable optimizing WTL from both tree growth and environmental perspectives.

Forest clearfelling is potentially a major environmental problem with respect to the degradation of water quality in receiving water courses due to phosphorus (P) release from soil and clearfelling residue stocks. Recent studies have highlighted the need to investigate the performance and benefits of potential mitigation methods such as whole tree harvesting (WTH) and grass seeding. In this study, fifteen plots (0.014 ha each) were constructed in a standing coniferous forest and P concentrations in plot runoff were monitored for one year prior to clearfelling. Following clearfelling three replicates of five forest harvesting management practices/treatments were applied to the plots: brash with grass seeding (Treatment 1), brash (Treatment 2), brash mat/ tree extraction route (Treatment 3), WTH (Treatment 4) and WTH with grass seeding (Treatment 5). These treatments were designed to comparatively assess the benefits of WTH and grass seeding practices on mitigating P released from forested peatlands following clearfelling and to determine the sources and sinks of P following clearfelling operations. Annual average total reactive phosphorus (TRP) concentrations in the plot runoff were −1 in all treatments before clearfelling, and increased to 79 μg L −1 , 160 μg L −1 , 335 μg L −1 , 50 μg L −1 and 38 μg L −1 in Treatments 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, respectively, after clearfelling. These results highlight that WTH and grass seeding can be used efficiently as methods to improve water quality, aiding in the protection of the biota residing in the aquatic systems draining peatland catchments.

Economic development creates challenges for land-use planners in balancing between increasing the use of natural resources and safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services. We developed and utilized multi-objective numeric optimization models to analyze the trade-offs between biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES). The approach was used in the land-use planning process in northern Finland when selecting potential peat production sites as a part of the development of the regional master plan. We first quantified Net Present Value (NPV) of peat production, biodiversity, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and water emissions of peatlands. Then we applied multi-objective optimization to examine the trade-offs between the variables as well as to determine a cost-efficient selection of potential peat production sites, that is, a selection which would simultaneously generate the greatest possible economic returns and environmental benefits. Our results showed that with a relatively small decrease in NPV, a substantial decrease in biodiversity loss and a reduction in water emissions compared to the benchmark level could be attained. However, a significant decrease in GHG emissions resulted in a substantial decrease in NPV. We conclude that it is possible to significantly improve land-use management by applying multi-objective optimization in land-use planning.