Visualisering – ett verktyg för att illustrera långsiktiga konsekvenser av slutavverkning och naturhänsyn

Abstract: Forestry in Sweden is currently conducted in a manner aiming at equating the production objectives and the biodiversity. To ensure that biodiversity is maintained, patches that are considered to be valuable now or in the future is saved in final fellings. How the tree retention areas will grow into the future forest stands is yet unknown.The purpose of this study was to visualize how different scenarios of natural consideration taken at final felling will evolve in a long term perspective, for two rotation periods. Projections of the forest conditions were executed with the decision support system Heureka and its applications PlanStart and PlanWise. The information about the projected forests was then used for the visualizations which were created in the software Visual Nature Studio. For each scenario a number of visualizations were presented in images and related information of standing volume.A dialogue was also carried out with scientists working with forestry planning to discuss the benefits of visualization. They believed visualization should a part of the decision support systems that are used in forestry planning. Visualization has a future in Swedish forestry, but before it’s possible to make visualization more available a method making the dataflow simpler is needed as this is the most time consuming part today.