ABSTRACT
The Swedish Government has recently decided to adopt a strategy for strengthening biodiversity and securing ecosystem services based on the Ecosystem Services Approach. Due to the strong clear-cutting tradition in Sweden, most forests are now dominated by even-aged stands, with even-age class distributions across the landscapes. Thus, there are now very few suitable full-layered stands for traditional continuous cover forestry. Single-tree selection, or continuous cover forestry, is the most traditional practice that completely avoids clear-cutting. In efforts to create opportunities and new ways to initiate and manage change in forestry in a manner that integrates policy and practice better than current processes, the Swedish government commissioned the Swedish Forest Agency and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences to test an adaptive forest management model. The twin goals of the project were to identify processes and practices that could increase biomass production and improve the environmental status of Swedish forests.
