Economic development creates challenges for land-use planners in balancing between increasing the use of natural resources and safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services. In a new BIOWATER-paper, peat production in Finland has been used to analyse the trade-offs between economy, biodiversity and other ecosystem services.

The authors have used multi-objective numeric optimization models. The results show that with a relatively small decrease in economic returns, a substantial decrease in biodiversity loss and a reduction in water emissions compared to the benchmark level could be attained. This shows that it is possible to significantly improve land-use management by applying multi-objective optimization in land-use planning.

The results of the study were used in the land-use planning process in northern Finland when selecting potential peat production sites, as part of the development of the regional master plan.

Artti Juutinen, Miia Saarimaa, Paavo Ojanen, Sakari Sarkkola, Arto Haara, Jouni Karhu, Mika Nieminen, Kari Minkkinen, Timo Penttilä, Matti Laatikainen, Anne Tolvanen, 2019.
Trade-offs between economic returns, biodiversity, and ecosystem services in the selection of energy peat production sites, Ecosystem Services, Volume 40, 2019, 101027,
ISSN 2212-0416, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2019.101027