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Comparing wood production and carbon sequestration after extreme thinnings in boreal Scots pine stands
Get PDFFennoscandian studies of thinning responses are usually limited to low thinning with moderate intensities. We studied here intermediate commercial thinning of different types (low, crown/normal, crown/strict, where respectively mostly intermediate and suppressed trees, mostly dominant and co-dominant trees, and only dominant trees were removed) and intensities (moderate and heavy) in Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) dominated stands. We analysed their responses in terms of wood production and carbon balance. We investigated three stands in Southern and Middle Finland at the stage of second or third commercial thinning (age 34–50 years). We observed their development for fifteen years, and then we further simulated it with MOTTI stand simulator until final felling (scheduled either at age 65 or 80 years). We considered various variables of interest related to the thinning outputs, volume production after thinning, simulated final felling, and carbon balance. For all variables of interest, there were negligible differences across thinning types, and strong ones across thinning intensities. Thinning removals were significantly higher in heavy than moderate treatments, although only crown heavy thinnings had significantly higher sawlog output than low moderate. Volume growth post thinning during the 15-years observation was highest in unthinned plots, followed by moderate and then heavy treatments. For both total standing volume at simulated final fellings and carbon balance at any times, there was a similar descending trend from unthinned to moderate to heavy treatments. Concluding, the results suggest that crown/normal thinning could be applied with moderate intensity as alternative to low thinning, while heavy thinnings do not provide commercial benefits in Scots pine stands. Heavy intermediate thinnings in Scots pine stands provides lower total carbon accumulation during rotation, and early higher wood products (although not necessarily in terms of sawlogs) at the expense of later ones. Moderate thinning reached on site carbon neutrality after 5-years, while heavy thinning after 15 years.202
Enabling factors and constraints for the adoption of animal welfare-enhancing technologies among Finnish dairy farmers
Get PDFThe restructuring of dairy farm production has resulted in enlarged unit sizes and production capacities on commercial farms in Finland. Concurrently, the livestock sector is facing high expectations and pressure to enhance farm animal welfare. Many dairy farms have invested in state-of-the-art technology, e.g. the proportion of milk milked by robots had risen 41% by 2019. Using a survey framework based on the constructs of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), our aim was to explore which factors may limit farmers’ willingness to adopt animal welfare-enhancing solutions. The decision to adopt a technology can be seen as a holistic issue that is affected by farmer attitudes, farm-specific constraints, and information provided by trusted sources. The financial situation of farms, appropriate technological devices, animal welfare, and human well-being should all be considered holistically. We utilize our exploratory survey sample as an indicator for discussing the current situation. The most critical constraints were related to financial issues, farmers’ personal coping challenges, and device operation problems in the barn environment. To promote the adoption of new technologies, farmers require technical and other support from trusted groups and evidence on the functionality of the technology. The insights from this exploratory study highlight the importance of available resources; the most important deficiencies related to available resources were financial and personal capacity to cope with duties.202
Methods for testing short- and long-term phosphorus fertilizing efficiency of products with varying solubility
Get PDFPhosphorus (P) recovery from nutrient-rich side streams (NRSS) and derived products is crucial to ensure sustainable food production in the future and to enhance the circular economy, but the agronomic efficiency of these products needs to be validated to reach these targets. In this study, we used a Hedley fractionation scheme and the diffusive gradient in thin film (DGT) method to determine P availability in 83 NRSS and derived products originating from Finland, Sweden, and Germany. Furthermore, two independent short- and long-term growth experiments with barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.), respectively, were conducted to evaluate P availability in 15 selected NRSS. In addition to the DGT soil test, different fertilizer extractants, 2 % formic acid (FA), 2 % citric acid, and neutral ammonium citrate, were tested for predicting P availability in growth experiments. Livestock manures and slurries were found to contain a notable portion of labile P and were comparable to superphosphate (SP). Despite the low shares of labile P in struvite (7.2 %) and AshDec® (1.3 %), they exhibited P availability comparable to SP fertilizer, as indicated by DGT (99 % and 238 % of SP equivalence, respectively). This suggests that factors other than solubility influenced P availability in these side streams. The DGT method as a promising soil test predicted both short- and long-term P availability better than the selected conventional chemical extraction methods did. The 2 % FA extract exhibited the poorest performance, overestimating P availability in some nutrient sources while underestimating others in long-term. These findings enhance our understanding of P availability in potential raw materials for fertilizers, facilitating more effective P management strategies in the circular economy.202
Estimation of the height profile of the path for autonomous driving in terrain
Get PDFA priori knowledge about the height profile of the path is vital for rollover avoidance in the context of autonomous driving through uneven forest ground. The forest ground is usually covered with either soft vegetation in summertime, or by snow in winter. Thus, the exact solid form of the forest ground cannot be detected by camera or LiDAR. This article, we propose height-odometry and aided height-odometry methods for ground height estimation. The height-odometry method depends solely on interoceptive and proprioceptive sensor data, while the aided height-odometry combines height-odometry output with the existing 3D map information. Thus, the central idea is to build a reference 3D path for autonomous forest machines where the spatial positioning – based on the RTK-GNSS or Forest SLAM method – is fused with the output of (aided) height-odometry method(s). We evaluate the proposed height-odometry methods in two separate environments that are accurately (3D) mapped by a UAV using the advanced machine-vision-based SfM method and the LiDAR-based SLAM algorithms. Through comprehensive data analysis, we demonstrate that the proposed 3D path estimation methods are practical and simple to implement, yet sufficient to estimate the height profile of the path with desired accuracy.202
Fungal community composition predicts forest carbon storage at a continental scale
Get PDFForest soils harbor hyper-diverse microbial communities which fundamentally regulate carbon and nutrient cycling across the globe. Directly testing hypotheses on how microbiome diversity is linked to forest carbon storage has been difficult, due to a lack of paired data on microbiome diversity and in situ observations of forest carbon accumulation and storage. Here, we investigated the relationship between soil microbiomes and forest carbon across 238 forest inventory plots spanning 15 European countries. We show that the composition and diversity of fungal, but not bacterial, species is tightly coupled to both forest biotic conditions and a seven-fold variation in tree growth rates and biomass carbon stocks when controlling for the effects of dominant tree type, climate, and other environmental factors. This linkage is particularly strong for symbiotic endophytic and ectomycorrhizal fungi known to directly facilitate tree growth. Since tree growth rates in this system are closely and positively correlated with belowground soil carbon stocks, we conclude that fungal composition is a strong predictor of overall forest carbon storage across the European continent.202
