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The EU aims at reaching carbon neutrality by 2050 and Finland by 2035. We integrated results of three spatially distributed model systems (FRES, PREBAS, Zonation) to evaluate the potential to reach this goal at both national and regional scale in Finland, by simultaneously considering protection targets of the EU biodiversity (BD) strategy. Modelling of both anthropogenic emissions and forestry measures were carried out, and forested areas important for BD protection were identified based on spatial prioritization. We used scenarios until 2050 based on mitigation measures of the national climate and energy strategy, forestry policies and predicted climate change, and evaluated how implementation of these scenarios would affect greenhouse gas fluxes, carbon storages, and the possibility to reach the carbon neutrality target. Potential new forested areas for BD protection according to the EU 10% protection target provided a significant carbon storage (426–452 TgC) and sequestration potential (− 12 to − 17.5 TgCO2eq a−1) by 2050, indicating complementarity of emission mitigation and conservation measures. The results of the study can be utilized for integrating climate and BD policies, accounting of ecosystem services for climate regulation, and delimitation of areas for conservation.

Uncertainties are essential, yet often neglected, information for evaluating the reliability in forest carbon balance projections used in national and regional policy planning. We analysed uncertainties in the forest net biome exchange (NBE) and carbon stocks under multiple management and climate scenarios with a process-based ecosystem model. Sampled forest initial state values, model parameters, harvest levels and global climate models (GCMs) served as inputs in Monte Carlo simulations, which covered forests of the 18 regions of mainland Finland over the period 2015–2050. Under individual scenarios, the results revealed time- and region-dependent variability in the magnitude of uncertainty and mean values of the NBE projections. The main sources of uncertainty varied with time, by region and by the amount of harvested wood. Combinations of uncertainties in the representative concentration pathways scenarios, GCMs, forest initial values and model parameters were the main sources of uncertainty at the beginning, while the harvest scenarios dominated by the end of the simulation period, combined with GCMs and climate scenarios especially in the north. Our regionally explicit uncertainty analysis was found a useful approach to reveal the variability in the regional potentials to reach a policy related, future target level of NBE, which is important information when planning realistic and regionally fair national policy actions.

Protecting forests provides potential synergies for both biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. Payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes are commonly used to promote biodiversity conservation in private forests, and including carbon as another target may be a cost-efficient way to promote both goals. We analyse a hypothetical reform on a forest biodiversity PES scheme by supplementing it with a carbon payment paid to landowners for also providing carbon benefits. With a site selection model, we examine how the proposed scheme could promote biodiversity and carbon values, and what level of the carbon payment would provide the highest synergy gains. We found that introducing the payment promotes both targets, but there is a temporal trade-off between selecting sites with high carbon storage or sites with good sequestration potential. The highest synergy gains are obtained in most cases by a second-best payment level of 10–20 € tCO2−1.

Forest management methods and harvest intensities influence wood production, carbon sequestration and biodiversity. We devised different management scenarios by means of stakeholder analysis and incorporated them in the forest growth simulator PREBAS. To analyse impacts of harvest intensity, we used constraints on total harvest: business as usual, low harvest, intensive harvest and no harvest. We carried out simulations on a wall-to-wall grid in Finland until 2050. Our objectives were to (1) test how the management scenarios differed in their projections, (2) analyse the potential wood production, carbon sequestration and biodiversity under the different harvest levels, and (3) compare different options of allocating the scenarios and protected areas. Harvest level was key to carbon stocks and fluxes regardless of management actions and moderate changes in proportion of strictly protected forest. In contrast, biodiversity was more dependent on other management variables than harvesting levels, and relatively independent of carbon stocks and fluxes.

The challenges posed by climate change, biodiversity loss, and land-use are deeply interconnected and integrated solutions are needed. This paper presents results from 11 contributions to a special issue covering topics of integrated modeling and spatial prioritization, mass-balance studies, Earth Observation techniques, research infrastructure developments, and evaluation of policy measures and economic compensation schemes. The spatial scale of the studies ranges from detailed site-specific to a European scale. This paper briefly summarizes the main findings of these studies, makes some general overall conclusions, and identifies topics for further research and methods developments.

Knowledge in the magnitude and historical trends in land use and land cover (LULC) is needed to understand the changing status of the key elements of the landscape and to better target management efforts. However, this information is not easily available before the start of satellite campaign missions. Scanned historical maps are a valuable but underused source of LULC information. As a case study, we used U-Net to automatically extract fields, mires, roads, watercourses, and water bodies from scanned historical maps, dated 1965, 1984 and 1985 for our 900 km2 study area in Southern Finland. We then used these data, along with the topographic databases from 2005 and 2022, to quantify the LULC changes for the past 57 years. For example, the total area of fields decreased by around 27 km2, and the total length of watercourses increased by around 2250 km in our study area.

Subject to hurricane disturbance for millennia, natural ecosystems of Puerto Rico exhibit clear patterns of resistance (e.g., many tree species have little immediate storm‐related mortality) and resilience (e.g., leaf litterfall and stream chemistry returned to pre‐hurricane levels in as little as five years). Contemporaneous studies of near‐shore areas also suggested no long‐term impacts of hurricanes; however, anthropogenic effects (coral bleaching, sedimentation) dominate the long‐term condition of marine systems in Puerto Rico, many of which have slowly evolved into novel ecosystems. A key characteristic of novel marine ecosystems is their long‐term loss of benefits and resilience, coupled to declining biodiversity and loss of structural or functional redundancy, signaling increased vulnerability to subsequent hurricanes. Human systems are also strongly affected by cyclonic storms, as evidenced by the recent impacts of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in the Caribbean. The lack of short‐term recovery from disturbance by coral reef ecosystems, coupled with an increasing recurrence of anthropogenic impacts, increasing hurricane frequency or severity, and sea‐level rise, may have irreversible long‐term socioeconomic consequences for coastal social–ecological systems and for community livelihoods. A comprehensive social–ecological understanding of hurricane effects in Puerto Rico is lacking in part because hurricane effects on human populations are not comprehensively followed. Although some studies suggest a path forward, finding effective methods to link measurements of storm intensity to the diverse components of tropical social–ecological systems remains a challenge.

Integrated long-term, in-situ observations are needed to document ongoing environmental change, to “ground-truth” remote sensing and model outputs and to predict future Earth system behaviour. The scientific and societal value of in-situ observations increases with site representativeness, temporal duration, number of parameters measured and comparability within and across sites. Research Infrastructures (RIs) can support harmonised, cross-site data collection, curation and publication. Integrating RI networks through site co-location and standardised observation methods can help answers three questions about the terrestrial carbon sink: (i) What are present and future carbon sequestration rates in northern European forests? (ii) How are these rates controlled? (iii) Why do the observed patterns exist? Here, we present a conceptual model for RI co-location and highlight potential insights into the terrestrial carbon sink achievable when long-term in-situ Earth observation sites participate in multiple RI networks (e.g., ICOS and eLTER). Finally, we offer recommendations to promote RI co-location.

Carbon sequestration and capture have gained a central position in forest governance, alongside wood production and biodiversity conservation, resulting in calls for policy coherence and integration across the EU. While coherence is often a target in the technical assessment of the policy design, it is important to understand how incoherent policies are supported by disconnected or incongruent knowledge claims and epistemologies. We address the coherence of forest policy by analysing the content and knowledge claims in forest, bioeconomy, and biodiversity strategies of Finland, an EU member state in which forests have a strong economic, political, and cultural status. Focussing on the argumentation regarding forest carbon, our analysis shows that the policy domains remain largely disconnected and rely on differentiated knowledge bases. Despite the explicit claims about policy coherence, few genuine attempts have been made towards integration and coordination between the domains. Our analysis reveals the different logics with which climate change is to be governed, and the types of knowledge utilised and produced in the integration of forest carbon as a policy object. Our analysis suggests that policy strategies with sectoral foci facilitate incoherent policymaking due to unresolved trade-offs and knowledge disagreements. Knowledge used in the policy design and implementation processes should be discussed thoroughly, and thereby integrated.

Forest conservation plays a central role in meeting national and international biodiversity and climate targets. Biodiversity and carbon values within forests are often estimated with models, introducing uncertainty to decision making on which forest stands to protect. Here, we explore how uncertainties in forest variable estimates affect modelled biodiversity and carbon patterns, and how this in turn introduces variability in the selection of new protected areas. We find that both biodiversity and carbon patterns were sensitive to alterations in forest attributes. Uncertainty in features that were rare and/or had dissimilar distributions with other features introduced most variation to conservation plans. The most critical data uncertainty also depended on what fraction of the landscape was being protected. Forests of highest conservation value were more robust to data uncertainties than forests of lesser conservation value. Identifying critical sources of model uncertainty helps to effectively reduce errors in conservation decisions.