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Der Klimawandel wirkt sich bereits stark auf die Waldökosysteme der Schweiz aus und dürfte dies zukünftig noch viel stärker tun. Die Veränderung der Standortbedingungen und das erhöhte Risiko von Störungen (Trockenheit, Stürme, Borkenkäfer) haben erhebliche nachteilige Auswirkungen auf das waldbauliche Potenzial der Wälder. Diese Auswirkungen können durch die Wahl geeigneter Baumarten und Produktionszeiträume reduziert werden. Der Klimawandel erfordert daher eine vorausschauende Änderung der waldbaulichen Strategien, damit die Waldökosysteme vital und resilient bleiben und alle ihre Ökosystemleistungen nachhaltig erbringen können. Die Anpassungen müssen von den Waldbesitzenden durch die Inwertsetzung der verschiedenen Waldleistungen, von denen die Holzvermarktung ein wichtiger Bestandteil bleibt, finanziert werden können. Im vorliegenden Artikel werden vier unterschiedliche waldbauliche Strategien («Weiter wie bisher», «Sanfte Lenkung », «Ertragsorientiert», «Starke Anpassung») und die daraus resultierenden ökonomischen Konsequenzen vor dem Hintergrund unterschiedlicher Klimaszenarien beschrieben. Die ökonomischen Konsequenzen der Strategien wurden mithilfe eines Modells simuliert. Die ökonomischen Ergebnisse zeigen, dass eine aktive Anpassung der Wälder an den Klimawandel möglich und aus wirtschaftlicher Sicht sogar wünschenswert ist. Sie zeigen aber auch die hohe Bedeutung von öffentlichen Beiträgen für die künftigen Waldanpassungsstrategien.

La valeur ajoutée de la digitalisation: être plusinformé, connecté et agile La digitalisation et les nouvelles technologies représentent un grand potentiel pour soutenir une gestion des écosystèmes forestiers qui soit proche de la nature, multifonctionnelle et durable. Il existe déjà de nombreux exemples concrets de l’utilisation judicieuse de ces technologies dans ce domaine exigeant et complexe. Les capteurs des satellites, des drones ou des smartphones fournissent des informations toujours plus précises sur l’état de la forêt et son évolution. La digitalisation et la mise en réseau des processus de gestion favorisent une pensée systémique et aident à mieux appréhender la complexité de la gestion forestière. Les plateformes d’échange d’expériences et de connaissances permettent de mettre en commun les nombreuses et diverses expertises venant de la pratique, ce qui permet de mieux comprendre, en fonction des situations et des faits, la dynamique des écosystèmes forestiers, les techniques sylvicoles utilisées et leurs effets. La réalité virtuelle offre la possibilité de rapprocher la forêt du grand public. Par exemple, le «voyage dans le temps», permis par une documentation visuelle de la forêt au cours du temps, peut être utilisé pour illustrer les effets des mesures sylvicoles et les relier concrètement aux attentes de la société et des propriétaires forestiers. Etre bien informé et renforcer la pensée systémique et les échanges avec les acteurs forestiers sont des conditions préalables importantes pour pouvoir s’adapter rapidement, de façon flexible et efficace et faire preuve d’agilité, ce d’autant plus dans un contexte de changements profonds, tels que les changements climatiques.

Evaluer l’effet de massifs forestiers sur la détente des visiteurs A ce jour, les professionnels de la forêt ne disposent d’aucun moyen simple pour évaluer dans quelle mesure une forêt permet la détente des visiteurs. Une méthode d’évaluation de l’impact potentiel d’une forêt sur quatre aspects liés à la détente (évasion, émerveillement, diversité, sécurité) a été développée et appliquée dans une forêt urbaine à Berne. Sa conception s’appuie sur une analyse approfondie du corpus d’études sur les préférences environnementales et des principales théories des sciences sociales qui les expliquent. Elle prend en compte des méthodes d’évaluation de la forêt reposant pour partie sur ces théories. Dans ce cadre, un système d’indicateurs a été développé, qui reprend les attributs forestiers les plus pertinents pour évaluer l’effet sur la détente, ainsi qu’une méthode de relevé permettant d’en faire l’inventaire relativement facilement. L’application de cette méthode dans le massif forestier du Dählhölzli offre une analyse détaillée de la situation actuelle et souligne quels indicateurs peuvent être influencés par la gestion sylvicole. Cette méthode d’évaluation peut être utilisée comme base de décision pour la prise en compte de la détente dans la planification et la gestion forestières.

Reconnaître les arbres-habitats grâce à l’application habitat.sylvotheque.ch Découvrir, rechercher et identifier les dendromicrohabitats portés par les arbres grâce à des photos à 360° prises en forêt: habitat.sylvotheque.ch est une plateforme informatique, disponible en français, en allemand et en anglais, pour apprendre à reconnaître les dendromicrohabitats, petits milieux de vie portés par les arbres et qui sont indispensables à des milliers d’organismes spécialisés. A l’aide de nombreux contenus multimédias sous forme d’images, de vidéos et de textes, l’utilisateur est mis au défi par quatre modes d’apprentissage interactifs à difficulté croissante. Le site, riche en informations, s’adresse autant au débutant qu’au fin connaisseur des arbres-habitats.

Forest functions (FF) are a constituent part of the concept of sustainable and multifunctional forestry in Central Europe (CE). We describe the origins and development of the current concept of FF in CE forestry and assess FF as a spatially-based tool for multi-objective forest management and policy based on a framework of six dimensions (purpose, type, legal status, mapping procedure, management and implementation). Designated FF areas indicate areas of relatively higher importance for public interests. In CE forestry, five specific purposes of FF can be identified: i) a tool for an adapted management regime, ii) the allocation of public money to subsidize services, iii) land use planning, iv) identification of ‘valuable’ locations in forest areas and v) a basis for dialog between the forestry sector and the public. Three main FF types are defined: productive (economic, supply), protective (ecological, environmental) and social (well-being, recreational), which are all further classified. One or more (or no) FF can be designated and overlapped in the same forest area. The public forestry administration has the main authority in the designation of FF, but several public services, NGOs, forest owners and the public may or must be involved in the designation process. Mapping FF areas is usually an essential part of forest planning at the landscape or regional spatial scale. The management regime in the designated areas, if compared to that used in general forests, is either the same, slightly adapted, strongly modified or restricted so as to ensure the provision of the target services. Management arrangements for providing desired FF on non-state forest land can be supported by financial instruments. The main advantage of FF is that they are a spatially-explicit tool for dealing with forest areas with high societal value. Three main criticisms of FF can be identified depending on how they are implemented: lack of operationalization, inadequate monitoring of management effectiveness and normative designation and mapping of FF.

Importance of marteloscopes for practice and teaching in Switzerland Marking is one of the core tasks of silvicultural activity. The decisions made are based on the application of the basic forestry methods, but always include a subjective component, as experience plays an important role. In this context, the “silvicultural God's gaze” in German “waldbaulicher Götterblick” is often spoken of. A possibility to discuss different silvicultural options and their consequences in a factual and comprehensible way is offered by the marteloscope. It is a didactic tool that makes it possible to carry out marking exercises based on quantitative data on site. Ideally, it consists of a real inventory and software that allows evaluation and discussion of the results, as well as a dynamic growth model. The marteloscope was developed in France in the 1990s. Today, there are many more than 40 marteloscopes in Switzerland that deal with a wide variety of silvicultural issues. Marteloscopes play a particularly important role in training and education: they allow the practice, questioning and improvement of one's own silvicultural actions based on quantitative principles. There is great potential for the further development of marteloscopes, in particular regarding the implementation of specific thematic and silvicultural issues, which, in addition to the usual stand characteristics such as tree species, diameter distribution, base area and volume, for example, allow statements to be made on ecology or on variables relevant to mountain silviculture such as local light availability. Several marteloscope software solutions have been developed in recent years. It would be important at least to simplify the data exchange between the solutions. It would also be desirable to close the gap that currently exists in the modelling of further stand development, to better estimate the consequences of different intervention variants.

International audience; AbstractKey messageUsing the three characteristic points of a forest stand, dg (mean quadratic diameter), dmin(diameter of the smallest tree) anddmax (diameter of the largest tree), appears informative enough to determine the parameters of the whole diameter distribution and, hence, the standing volume, with an accuracy of 2–3%. This is related principally with a particular feature of the Weibull distribution function, and the empirical dependency of the main scale parameter α + β from the mean quadratic diameter (dg): This allows the prediction of the parameter β with an unexpectedly high likelihood. This feature could be used for growth modelling as well as inventory purposes, at least for monospecific and even-aged stands and, maybe more, because this feature is proper to the function itself.ContextOne of the most appealing applications of diameter distribution functions is to predict compliant stand diameters without needing to tally all stems, but in determining the function parameters only on the base of simple stand characteristics. This can be applied for yield model construction or inventory purposes.AimsThe aim of this paper is to compare different methods of estimating the Weibull distribution parameters, partly based on parameter recovery method (PRM). They use a remarkable, empiric property of the Weibull function. Their performances are assessed in comparison to real distributions from a wide database of permanent Swiss yield plots repeatedly measured (time series) for Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) and European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.).MethodsThe Weibull distribution offers the advantage of simple but reliable estimation procedures. One of these is the main (scale) parameter β being given at a remarkable point of the function free, i.e. independent from the shape parameter γ. Because dg lies very close to this point, it correlates empirically very tightly with this parameter and thus allows for a trustful simple estimation. We compare, with appropriate statistic tests, real distribution with such obtained with the usual maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) of the Weibull parameters and those obtained with these new procedures.ResultsThe results obtained from a set of 800 yield plots of regular spruce stands and 596 of beech in Switzerland illustrate the good performances of the two much simpler procedures. The accuracy of estimating the standing volume is about 1.4% for beech and 2.8% for spruce when the site index (SI) is known.ConclusionThe three considered characteristic stand attributes (dg, dmin and dmax) appear robust enough for determining the diameter distribution with a respectable accuracy. This is enough reason for a revival of the old, but very ingenious, method of angle count sampling of Walter Bitterlich (1947).

The role of digital technologies for fostering sustainability and efficiency in forest-based supply chains is well acknowledged and motivated several studies in the scope of precision forestry. Sensor technologies can collect relevant data in forest-based supply chains, comprising all activities from within forests and the production of the woody raw material to its transformation into marketable forest-based products. Advanced planning systems can help to support decisions of the various entities in the supply chain, e.g., forest owners, harvest companies, haulage companies, and forest product processing industry. Such tools can help to deal with the complex interdependencies between different entities, often with opposing objectives and actions—which may increase efficiency of forest-based supply chains. This paper analyzes contemporary literature dealing with digital technologies in forest-based supply chains and summarizes the state-of-the-art digital technologies for real-time data collection on forests, product flows, and forest operations, as well as planning systems and other decision support systems in use by supply chain actors. Higher sustainability and efficiency of forest-based supply chains require a seamless information flow to foster integrated planning of the activities over the supply chain—thereby facilitating seamless data exchange between the supply chain entities and foster new forms of collaboration. Therefore, this paper deals with data exchange and multi-entity collaboration aspects in combination with interoperability challenges related with the integration among multiple process data collection tools and advanced planning systems. Finally, this interdisciplinary review leads to the discussion of relevant guidelines that can guide future research and integration projects in this domain.

Les incertitudes, loin d’etre une simple facette de la gestion des ecosystemes forestiers, touchent au contraire a toutes ses dimensions et sont au coeur de son extraordinaire complexite. Ce constat nous incite a penser les approches et les outils de la gestion forestiere dans la perspective de ces incertitudes. Dans cet essai, la question est abordee sous l’angle de trois grands types d’incertitude: 1) les incertitudes portant sur la definition d’objectifs de gestion sur le tres long terme, 2) les incertitudes quant aux perturbations qui peuvent affecter la gestion forestiere, et 3) les incertitudes portant sur les ecosystemes et leur dynamique. L’etude de ces trois types d’incertitudes fournit des elements de reflexion allant dans le sens d’une gestion dynamique et adaptative des ecosystemes forestiers. Tout d’abord, le poids des incertitudes futures doit etre relativise et ramene au champ d’action qui est reellement a la portee du gestionnaire forestier. Ensuite, les progres considerables de ces dernieres annees dans le domaine de la teledetection et des outils informatiques d’aide a la decision rendent possible une gestion dynamique et adaptative des ecosystemes. Enfin, la mise en place d’un processus d’apprentissage en continu, a travers des dispositifs et des supports adaptes, permet d’affiner toujours plus la comprehension des ecosystemes.

The potential of Sentinel-2 satellite data for forest applications Sentinel-2 satellite data have been freely available since the end of 2015. The high spatial resolution, the global coverage, the frequent revisit times and the important spectral bands for vegetation analyses open up new perspectives for forest applications. In this study, the potential of Sentinel-2 was investigated through application examples in the forest enterprise of Burgergemeinde Bern on the Swiss Plateau. For this purpose the determination of the deciduous or coniferous proportion, the recording of interventions, as well as the early detection of natural disturbances were tested. Reference data from the forest enterprise (forest inventory, map of harvesting measures, delimitation of a wildfire) were used as training data and for the validation of the results. By using Sentinel-2 data from three different dates, 56% of the variation of the deciduous or coniferous proportion could be explained by a regression model. This model was much better than those that used data from one or two time steps only. The distinction of pure deciduous and coniferous stands achieved an accuracy of 90%. The detection of interventions determined by the differences in the spectral information of Sentinel-2 data from two acquisition dates was highly compliant with the information from the forest enterprise. This was also confirmed by the detection of a forest fire area, which highlights the potential of Sentinel-2 for the early and large-scale detection of natural disturbances.

Wirtschaftliche Konsequenzen waldbaulicher Strategien zur Bewaltigung des Klimawandels Der Klimawandel stellt die Schweizer Waldwirtschaft vor grosse wirtschaftliche Herausforderungen. Dabei stellt sich die Frage, welche Waldbaustrategien sich am besten eignen, um den wirtschaftlichen Erfolg auch unter neuen klimatischen Bedingungen zu gewahrleisten und mogliche Ausfallrisiken zu minimieren. Im Rahmen des Forschungsprogramms Wald und Klimawandel wurde ein Modell entwickelt, das die monetaren Auswirkungen von vier Waldbaustrategien ermittelt. Es handelt sich dabei um eine ertragsorientierte, eine risikomindernde, eine kostenmeidende und eine Referenzstrategie. Die auf das Schweizer Mittelland bezogenen Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die verschiedenen Waldbaustrategien den wirtschaftlichen Erfolg stark beeinflussen. Eine ertragsorientierte beziehungsweise eine risikomindernde Strategie scheint wirtschaftlich am erfolgversprechendsten. «So weiter wie bisher» stellt die schlechteste Strategie dar. Politik und Forstw...

SUMMARY In the framework of multi-objective forest management, ‘priority areas’ which are relatively more important for the selected management objectives are commonly designated. Using a comparative analysis of guided interviews, we examined the use and importance of priority areas in forest planning in nine Central European countries. In all countries, priority areas have been widely used, forest function areas and protected areas being the most common. According to management objectives, more than 20 types of priority areas were recognised, with priority areas for protection against natural hazards, nature conservation, recreation, welfare, and production being the most prevalent. Criteria for the designation differ among the countries; however, site conditions and infrastructure facilities are most often used. The scale of designation ranges from 1:10 000–1:50 000, and the size of priority areas varies from 0.1 ha to several hundreds of ha. The level of participation of stakeholders involved in the designation of priority areas differs among and within the countries. The effectiveness of priority areas for forest management can be improved by transparent designation criteria, objective oriented management measures, and efficient financial instruments.

Semantic wikis support collaboratively editing, categorising, interlinking and retrieving web pages for a group of experts working in a certain domain. The use of semantic technologies allows the expression of wiki content in a more structured way, which increases its potential use. This contribution presents an overview of the development process towards a semantic wiki related to a repository of forest decision support systems, including models, methods and data used, as well as case studies and lessons learned. An international group of experts took part in the conceptualisation of the semantic wiki (i.e. identification of wiki properties and forms), provided content and developed queries to analyse the information gathered. The resulting ForestDSS wiki gives an overview of the current use, development and application of forest decision support systems worldwide. Based on the experiences gathered during the process, some challenges are reported and conclusions on further developments are made.

WIS.2 is a powerful software instrument for the management of forest ecosystems, which is targeted, efficient, sustainable,close to nature and multifunctional. This decision support system comprises numerous applications, each of which represents a particular domain of silvicultural management. It is possible to set up an analysis of the principal characteristics of a given domain, its particularities, the possibilities of silvicultural intervention and its limits, but also forest resources that are likely to be of specific interest. WIS.2 also makes it possible to put into place a managerial strategy by starting with a defined targeted state of the ecosystem in order to ensure the sustainable supply of forestry products in accordance with demand,then, concepts of intervention that are determined for the long and medium term according to the conditions of the stands. WIS.2 is conceived in such a way that it can quickly be adapted to accommodate changes in silvicultural management with relative ease.

Aim of the study: Decision support systems for forest management (FMDSS) have been developed world wide to account for a broad range of forest ecosystems, management goals and organizational frameworks (e.g. the wiki page of the FORSYS project reports 62 existing FMDSSs from 23 countries). The need to enhance the collaboration among this diverse community of developers and users fostered the rise of new group communication processes that could capture useful knowledge from past experiences in order to efficiently provide it to new FMDSS development efforts.Material and methods: This paper presents and tests an exploratory process aiming to identify the empirical guidelines assisting developers and users of FMDSS. This process encompasses aDelphi survey built upon the consolidation of the lessons-learned statements that summarize the past experiences of the experts involved in the FORSYS project. The experts come from 34 countries and have diverse interests, ranging from forest planners, IT developers, social scientists studying participatory planning, and researchers with interests in knowledge management and in quantitative models for forest planning.Main results: The proposed 37 empirical guidelines that group 102 lessons-learned cover a broad range of issues including the DSS development cycle, involvement of the stakeholders, methods, models and knowledge-based techniques in use.Research highlights: These results may be used for improving new FMDSS development processes, teaching and training and further suggest new features of FMDSS and future research topics. Furthermore, the guidelines may constitute a knowledge repository that may be continuously improved by a community of practice.Keywords: Forest management; guidelines; guidelines definition process; lessons learned; decision support systems; system architecture; knowledge management; participatory planning; Delphi.

Aim of study. The aim of the study was to overview forest management decision support systems (FMDSS) listed in the FORSYS wiki in terms of software design and architecture.Area of study. A total of 62 FMDSS from 23 countries were included into the study.Material and methods. First, all FMDSS listed in the FORSYS wiki were described in terms of functionalities, typologies and elements of architecture. Thereafter, the findings were compared with the desired architectural features of FMDSS to identify success or potential gaps. Finally, some measures were suggested to improve knowledge transfer and smooth integration of system components.Main results. Most of the systems listed in the FORSYS wiki originate from research projects and are either knowledge- or model-driven. There are only few compound systems or tools that can be used as sub-components in integrated systems.Research highlights. There is a lack of generic platforms or DSS generators that would facilitate construction of integrated systems. Further efforts are needed to study the potential of cloud services. Keywords: forest management; decision support systems; software architecture; typologies.