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Research projects 17
Forests play a fundamental part in the well-being of humankind, and restoration of forests has now emerged as a global priority. Yet, it is still poorly understood how efficiently forest restoration can bring back the complexity of functioning ecosystems, such as the crucial networks of species interactions. In this project, we study the assembly of food webs during tropical forest restoration in Kibale National Park, Uganda.
Team
Sille Holm Geoffrey M. Malinga
The overall objective of the SuFoRUn project is to develop new models, methods and decision systems that may effectively integrate currently fragmented multidisciplinary knowledge to support forest management and policy development in a context of global change. The European and the American experiences with the development/application of models and tools to support forest management and develop innovative forest policies provide a solid base for continuous improvement of its efficiency and effectiveness in a context of global change (e.g. changes in forest policies, changes in forest owner structures, changes in climatic conditions).
Team
Heli Peltola, Timo Pukkala, Dr Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo ( Centre Tecnologic Forestal de Catalunya CTFC).
The goals of the SPEVINDS project were: 1)Conducting fundamental research and 2) Generating industrial applications and prototyping. Basic research was conducted around the topic of how to pack and save spectral images most effectively, involving, for example, the types of files that need to be developed. A key aspect of the project is naturally how the basic research findings can be applied in practice and how they can be used to generate business
Team
Markku Hauta-Kasari, Juha Purmonen
The overall aim of the project is to strengthen the forest-related higher education system in Laos to improve domestic capacity to sustainably manage forests for the benefit of the people and the environment, while at the same time enabling Laos to effectively respond to the demands and opportunities of international processes such as the Agenda 2030 (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
Team
Prof. Markku Kanninen; Nicholas Hogarth, Adrian Monge, Dipjoy Chakma
To support and strengthen the capacity of Hamelmalo Agricultural College (HAC) so that it can contribute to increasing agriculture productivity and enhancing environmental sustainability, through their education mission by meeting ecological, economic and social needs and by building of new multidisciplinary partnerships and networks and strengthening of the existing ones.
Team
Mohamed Elfadl, Semere Amlesom, Juha Helenius, Mike Starr, Markku Larjavaara
Hundreds of geoglyphs, geometrically formed man-made earth works, have only recently been found in southwestern Brazilian Amazonia and adjacent Bolivia. Geoglyphs occur in an area that partly overlaps with bamboo-dominated forests that are exceptional rain forests because they are dominated by a single species. The aim of the project is to find out if there is a causal relationship between bamboo forests and geoglyphs.
Team
Risto Kalliola, Martti Pärssinen, Pirjo K. Virtanen, Kalle Ruokolainen
Global observations show that many high-elevation treelines are not advancing in spite of climatic warming. In this project, we aim to gain in-depth insight into the future of Andean treeline forests in a changing climate by predicting their persistence and upslope advance. This will be done by modelling potential microrefugial areas for treeline forests (suitable sites for tree growth in long-term) based on microtopography and current and future climate.
Team
Johanna Toivonen, Maaike Bader, Carlos Gonzales-Inca, Nilton Montoya
Fresh water scarcity due to glacier retreat and decreasing precipitation related to global climate change will be one of the most serious environmental and social challenges in the Andean Amazonian region in this century. Rapidly increasing land use changes make water scarcity even more critical in dry season and, on the other hand, increase flooding and landslide risks in rainy season, because deforested areas have lost their natural water retention and storage capacity. A better understanding of natural water fluxes of forest ecosystems is needed to be able to solve the problems in water cycle.
Team
Johanna Toivonen, Sanna Huttunen, Tinja Pitkämäki, Carlos Gonzales Inca, Lassi Suominen
The concept of green economy is predicted to replace sustainable development as the new driving force of environmental action. A green economy is defined as low-carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive. Although the concept has received various critics, there is little empirical research related to its policy expectations or concerns. Developing countries rich in natural resources, such as Cambodia and Laos, may be able to benefit from green growth by having the opportunity to jump-start their transition towards a green economy. This project proposes a new framework to analyse green growth transitions in Cambodia and Laos and other developing countries in two extremely natural resource dependent sectors; forestry and energy.
Team
Jyrki Luukkanen (FFRC), Visa Tuominen (FFRC), Mika Korkeakoski (FFRC), Markku Kanninen (VITRI), Dipjoy Chakma (VITRI), Mira Käkönen (UH)
The main innovation of this research project is to approach and analyse REDD+ not only as a climate change mitigation measure, but as a new environmental governance mechanism that can lead to major changes in the forest governance and through it, distribution of benefits, costs, risks and opportunities of land use and forest management between the actors and groups involved. The main interest in this research is on how the notion of responsive forest governance is addressed in the processes. In this case,the responsive forest governance is concerned with issues of negotiation power, participation in planning and implementation of REDD+ and allocation of costs and benefits among the stakeholders and groups involved. The research results are expected to assist in designing socially equitable and environmentally appropriate options for REDD+ and further developing selected approaches to sustainable forestry that can help to achieve the goals of REDD+. Internationally, this proposed research could contribute significantly to policy-relevant research and empirical knowledge as well as theoretical debates on the nexus of social, economic and environmental sustainability and responsive and deliberative forest governance in developing world.
Team
Irmeli Mustalahti, PI Salla Rantala ja Melis Ece (2012-2013), Post doc researchers Sabaheta Ramcilovic-Suominen (2015-2018), Post doc researcher Daniel Hinojosa Flores, PhD student (on-going) Bishnu Devkota, PhD student (on-going) Maija Hyle, PhD student (on-going) Dipjoy Chakma, PhD student (on-going, externally funded) Mathias Cramm, research assistant (periodical) Phetsamone Soulivong, research assistant (periodical)