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In Focus
In practice, this diversification involves increasing the share of deciduous trees, and especially birch.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DETECTS THE EARLY STAGE OF FOREST DAMAGE
Metsä Group and the AI developer CollectiveCrunch have developed an application that makes it easier to identify and visualise insect damage. The application is based on artificial intelligence and remote surveying data. It detects changes that indicate that trees are under heavy stress and point to early forest damage. The application shows the area of damage in red on a map, and estimates both the probability and severity of the damage. The application can identify the early stage of forest damage even earlier than the human eye, making it possible to prevent the expansion of the damage. Metsä Group’s forest owner members can use the application through the Metsäverkko service. Metsäverkko is a free online service that facilitates forest owners’ management of their forest assets. The damage detection application was chosen as the innovation of the year in the Quality Innovation Award 2023 competition, both in Finland and internationally.
sifies the overall selection of species found in the forest, which has a generally balancing im- pact on biotic communities,” Lehesvirta says. The state of biodiversity is improving In regenerative forestry, a mixed forest can ei- ther be established through cultivation, or de- ciduous trees can be allowed to grow naturally alongside cultivated seedlings. The main point is that deciduous trees are taken into consider- ation and left in the forest during all stages of forestry, from young stand management to re- generation felling. Every tree species has its own group of species living on it, so making the tree species more di- verse increases the biodiversity of forest nature. In addition to the different tree species, trees of different ages and in different stages of decay are needed in forests, as some species are high- ly specialised regarding their habitat. There are 5,000 species of organism that live on decaying wood, for example. Understanding nature Globally viewed, regenerative forestry is an ex- ceptional way to practise the bioeconomy, ac- cording to Lehesvirta.
“In regenerative forestry, tree species used industrially are grown as part of an ecosys- tem with conditions to which the trees have adapted during their evolution. This approach is fundamentally different from mainstream land use such as cultivated forests and planta- tions that are based on changing the land use and removing the original nature. We can or- ganise the production of raw material on an industrial scale in a way that allows the ma- jority of the area’s original species to contin- ue to occur in the ecosystem despite the pro- duction.” The goal of regenerative forestry is to strength- en forests’ vitality, biodiversity and climate re- silience. When this goal is achieved, economic growth will no longer entail the decrease of the state of nature. Instead, forests can be used so that they simultaneously provide raw material, food and recreation, act as carbon sinks, clean water and air, and combat erosion. “Regenerative forestry offers a very interest- ing answer to the question of how to use land when faced with the current environmental challenges. It is also a good example of Metsä Group’s efforts to operate in a way that shows a better understanding of nature.” •
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