WEHAM-Scenarios

Background and Objective

Based on the National Forest Inventory (BWI) 2012, the German federal government and federal states, together with associations, developed the base-scenario for the forest development and timber resource modelling (WEHAM). The WEHAM-base scenario reflects future forest management and considers the current as well as the expected economic and legislative regulatory framework for forest management. The model takes into account current forest owner objectives in forest management, current and expected market conditions, as well as legal regulations like nature conservation.

In advance to the BWI 2012, stakeholders from politics, administration, associations and industry requested participation in the development of further WEHAM scenarios in order to identify and evaluate alternative scenarios of forest management and timber use.

Against this backdrop, the goal of the joint research project "WEHAM scenarios" was the development of forest management and timber use scenarios in a stakeholder participation process.The results were evaluated by means of a sustainability assessment, in particular to answer questions in regard to the protection of  climate and biodiversity.

Target Group

Politics, administration, associations, economy

Approach

In this research project, we intended to develop forest management and timber use scenarios based on a participative stakeholderprocess, and to conduct  a sustainability assessment to evaluate scenario results, particularly focussing on climate change and biodiversity.

Data and Methods

With the help of stakeholders, we collected data to identify expectations of different stakeholdergroups on forest management and timber resources and summarized this information in scenarios.

Part of this data for scenario development was, for example, information on regional raw wood demand for energy and material use.

We assessed the sustainability of the sceanrios with the help of indicators. This allowed for comparison of economic, ecologic and social impacts of forest management and wood use. To evaluate how different scenarios of forest management reflect on biodiversity, we developed and tested a WEHAM-adjusted method.

Our Research Questions

What demands do stakeholders have in regard to the future use of forests and timber?

How would the implementation of these demands affect the forest structure and the future supply of timber?

What would be the economic, environmental and social consequences of the change in forest structure and the amount of raw wood?

Results

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