Boreal Forest Landscape Restoration in the Face of Extensive Forest Fragmentation and Loss

Publications

Nov 18, 2025
photo

Forest stand subjected to clear-felling and stump harvest. Photo: Jon Andersson

This book chapter discuss options for landscape restoration in Sweden. It highlights different types of restoration and with a special emphasis on prestoration - restoration that simultaneously consider past, present and future conditions. To address landscapes, the chapter considers four critical planning dimensions; land cover, forest age, tree species and forest attributes.

Historical conditions that provide a natural legacy for defining restoration targets are not applicable without adjusting these targets to expected future condi-tions. Prestoration approaches, defined as restoration that simultaneously considers past, present, and future conditions with a changing climate, are necessary to advance the protection of biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services. Large areas of boreal forest landscapes are transformed and degraded by industrial forestry prac-tices. With largely fragmented and too-small areas of remaining high conservation value forests, protection and preservation are insufficient and must be complemented by active restoration in the managed forest matrix. Successful forest landscape restoration incorporates varied spatiotemporal scales and resolutions to compose restoration routes that best reflect the expected future sustainability challenges as well as planning and governance frameworks.

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Source/Author(s)
  • Johan Svensson
  • Grzegorz Mikusinksi
  • Jakub Bubnicki
  • Jon Andersson
  • Bengt Gunnar Jonsson
Topic
  • Active Restoration
  • Integrative Forest Management
  • Passive Forest Restoration
Stakeholders
  • Landowners & Practitioners
  • Planners & Implementers
Purpose
  • Connectivity and landscape diversity
  • Structural diversity
Biogeographic region
  • Boreal
Countries
  • Sweden
Resource public date
  • 2023