Scanning the solutions for the sustainable supply of forest ecosystem services in Europe.

Forests are key components of European multifunctional landscapes and supply numerous forest ecosystem services (FES) fundamental to human well-being. The sustainable provision of FES has the potential to provide responses to major societal challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, or rural development. To identify suitable strategies for the future sustenance of FES, we performed a solution scanning exercise with a group of transdisciplinary forest and FES experts from different European regions. We identified and prioritized fifteen major challenges hindering the balanced provision of multiple FES and identified a series of potential solutions to tackle each of them. The most prominent challenges referred to the increased frequency and impacts of extreme weather events and the normative mindset regarding forest management. The respective solutions pointed to the promotion of forest resilience via climate-smart forestry and mainstreaming FES-oriented management through a threefold strategy focusing on education, awareness raising, and networking. In a subsequent survey, most solutions were assessed as highly effective, transferable, monitorable, and with potential for being economically efficient. The implementation of the solutions could have synergistic effects when applying the notion of leverage points. Seven emerging pathways towards the sustainable supply of FES have been identified. These pathways build on each other and are organized based on their potential for transformation: (1) shifting forest management paradigms towards pluralistic ecosystem valuation; (2) using integrated landscape approaches; (3) increasing forest resilience; (4) coordinating actions between forest-related actors; (5) increasing participation in forest planning and management; (6) continuous, open, and transparent knowledge integration; and (7) using incentive-based instruments to support regulating and cultural FES. These pathways can contribute to the implementation of the new EU Forestry Strategy to support the balanced supply of multiple FES. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11625-022-01111-4.

Economic valuation of urban forest benefits in Finland.

Urban development projects may cause loss of amenity values of green areas, which should be taken into consideration in planning. Therefore, quantitative information on residents' valuation concerning urban forests is needed for assessing urban land use. The purpose of this investigation was to study the valuation of urban forests in two different urban environments Joensuu and Salo, Finland. The aims were to study the attitudes towards and benefits related to the use of urban forests and, in particular, to measure the valuations in monetary terms using contingent valuation, i.e. measure the residents' willingness-to-pay for larger wooded recreation areas and for small forested parks. Urban forests were seen in both towns as clearly producing positive benefits rather than causing negative effects. The negative features of forests were related to the management of the areas rather than their existence. The main values were related to nature and social functions of forests. In contrast, timber production achieved a distinctively low priority in both study towns. The results stress the importance of defining urban forest policies for municipalities in Finland. More than two-thirds of the respondents were willing to pay for the use of recreation areas. Good location and active management raised the average WTP. Moreover, approximately half of the respondents were willing to pay for preventing construction in urban forests. The results also show that the monetary value of amenity benefits in recreation areas is much higher than the present maintenance costs. The examples concerning the advantageousness of construction on green areas suggest that a limit could be found where the infill of housing areas is not worthwhile from the point of view of society, if the losses of green space benefits are taken into account.

The levels of zinc, copper, calcium and magnesium in serum and urine after heart-valve replacement. Effects of oxygenator type and postoperative parenteral nutrition.

We studied the effects of mitral or aortic valve-replacement operations with cardiopulmonary bypass on the levels of zinc, copper, calcium, and magnesium in serum and urine in 23 patients. The specimens of blood and urine were taken preoperatively and on the second and fifth postoperative days. There were remarkable decreases in serum levels on the second postoperative day of all four bioelements in all patients compared to the preoperative levels. At the same time there were also clear decreases of calcium and magnesium in urinary excretions. The urine zinc and copper excretion showed no big variations during the three study periods. On the fifth postoperative day, serum magnesium levels increased in all patients in spite of increased urine excretion. Serum calcium levels decreased on the fifth day further and urine excretion increased again. Serum copper levels increased slightly on the fifth postoperative day compared to the second postoperative day. At the same time serum zinc concentrations increased only in the patients who had parenteral nutrition (approximately 40 kcal per kg of body weight per day) for 4 postoperative days. The effect on zinc levels was the only difference in parameters between patients given conventional fluid therapy with 5% glucose solution or parenteral nutrition with 30% glucose, amino acid, and fat emulsion regimen. There were no differences in the bioelements between patients perfused with bubble or membrane oxygenators.