Enhancing multifunctionality in European boreal forests: The potential role of Triad landscape functional zoning

Land-use policies aim at enhancing the sustainable use of natural resources. The Triad approach has been suggested to balance the social, ecological, and economic demands of forested landscapes. The core idea is to enhance multifunctionality at the landscape level by allocating landscape zones with specific management priorities, i.e., production (intensive management), multiple use (extensive management), and conservation (forest reserves). We tested the efficiency of the Triad approach and identified the respective proportion of above-mentioned zones needed to enhance multifunctionality in Finnish forest landscapes. Through a simulation and optimization framework, we explored a range of scenarios of the three zones and evaluated how changing their relative proportion (each ranging from 0 to 100%) impacted landscape multifunctionality, measured by various biodiversity and ecosystem service indicators. The results show that maximizing multifunctionality required around 20% forest area managed intensively, 50% extensively, and 30% allocated to forest reserves. In our case studies, such landscape zoning represented a good compromise between the studied multifunctionality components and maintained 61% of the maximum achievable net present value (i.e., total timber economic value). Allocating specific proportion of the landscape to a management zone had distinctive effects on the optimized economic or multifunctionality values. Net present value was only moderately impacted by shifting from intensive to extensive management, while multifunctionality benefited from less intensive and more diverse management regimes. This is the first study to apply Triad in a European boreal forest landscape, highlighting the usefulness of this approach. Our results show the potential of the Triad approach in promoting forest multifunctionality, as well as a strong trade-off between net present value and multifunctionality. We conclude that simply applying the Triad approach does not implicitly contribute to an overall increase in forest multifunctionality, as careful forest management planning still requires clear landscape objectives.

Future supply of boreal forest ecosystem services is driven by management rather than by climate change

Forests provide a wide variety of ecosystem services (ES) to society. The boreal biome is experiencing the highest rates of warming on the planet and increasing demand for forest products. To foresee how to maximize the adaptation of boreal forests to future warmer conditions and growing demands of forest products, we need a better understanding of the relative importance of forest management and climate change on the supply of ecosystem services. Here, using Finland as a boreal forest case study, we assessed the potential supply of a wide range of ES (timber, bilberry, cowberry, mushrooms, carbon storage, scenic beauty, species habitat availability and deadwood) given seven management regimes and four climate change scenarios. We used the forest simulator SIMO to project forest dynamics for 100 years into the future (2016-2116) and estimate the potential supply of each service using published models. Then, we tested the relative importance of management and climate change as drivers of the future supply of these services using generalized linear mixed models. Our results show that the effects of management on the future supply of these ES were, on average, 11 times higher than the effects of climate change across all services, but greatly differed among them (from 0.53 to 24 times higher for timber and cowberry, respectively). Notably, the importance of these drivers substantially differed among biogeographical zones within the boreal biome. The effects of climate change were 1.6 times higher in northern Finland than in southern Finland, whereas the effects of management were the opposite-they were three times higher in the south compared to the north. We conclude that new guidelines for adapting forests to global change should account for regional differences and the variation in the effects of climate change and management on different forest ES.

Building up an ecologically sustainable and socially desirable post-COVID-19 future

COVID-19 crisis has emphasized how poorly prepared humanity is to cope with global disasters. However, this crisis also offers a unique opportunity to move towards a more sustainable and equitable future. Here, we identify the underlying environmental, social, and economic chronic causes of the COVID-19 crisis. We argue in favour of a holistic view to initiate a socio-economic transition to improve the prospects for global sustainability and human well-being. Alternative approaches to "Business-As-Usual" for guiding the transition are already available for implementation. Yet, to ensure a successful and just transition, we need to change our priorities towards environmental integrity and well-being. This necessarily means environmental justice, a different worldview and a closer relationship with nature.

Separation of blood in microchannel bends

Most clinical chemistry tests are performed on cell-free serum or plasma. Therefore micro assay devices for blood tests require integrated on-chip microfluidics for separation of plasma or serum from blood. This is achieved by a new blood separation technique based on a microchannel bend structure developed within the collaborative microtele-biochip muTBC) project co-funded by the German Ministry for education and research (BMBF). Different prototype polymer chips have been manufactured with an UV-LIGA process and hot embossing technology. The separation efficiency of these chips has been determined with samples of human whole blood as well as diluted blood samples. The results show different separation efficiencies up to 90% for blood cells and plasma depending on microchannel geometry as well as cell concentration. As compared to present microfluidic devices for the separation of blood cells like filters or filtration by diffusion the microchannel bend is an integrated on-chip blood separation method, which combines the advantages of rapid separation times and a simple geometry.

The evolution of lab-on-A-chip: the Micro-Tele-BioChip

The vision of multianalyte point-of-care diagnostics (POCT) is a handheld device that every patient can use easily for continuous monitoring of, for example, drug efficiency in the treatment of chronic diseases. Technologies are needed to realise this vision. Some are described here in the prototyping and industrial production of a disposable chip for the Micro-Tele-BioChip (muTBC) platform. muTBC is a technology platform that can be customised to meet specific requirements in drug safety and POCT.