Ljusk Ola Eriksson

My teaching experience refers essentially to various aspects of forest management planning. Being a topic within business administration, getting close to actual planning is important as well as understanding the underlying principles. Thus, conducting exercises, solving planning problems, and discussing what went on form basic elements of the curricula. Central themes are:

·        The concept of planning. What makes planning an activity different from other human endeavors? What qualifies planning in a professional and enterprise context?

·        The planning procedures of different forest owners. How differs planning of a large forest company from that of a family forester? How should different ecosystem services and stakeholder interests be integrated in the planning process?

·        Decision support systems (DSS). What does a DSS consist of? What are the requirements on DSS for different planning purposes? 

·        Analysis techniques. What questions can you answer with a simulation approach and an optimization approach, respectively? How are optimization problems formulated and the solution interpreted?

I am currently responsible for the work with forest DSS in the 15p credit Bachelor course  Forest and landscape planning.

My research interests rests on a few basic elements: The research is quantitative when it comes to data analysis, and qualitative when it comes to interpretation; it deals with decision problems, i.e. what could be, rather than mapping what is; decision problems should be formulated based on the actual (or perceivable) conditions governing those making the decisions; it is long term (spanning several decades) and integrative, combining elements from different research domains. In summary, what I hope I can do is to tell a convincing story about the options available to decision makers.

My areas of application are mostly large scale, and in particular associated with either the forest landscape or the forest of the forest holding. It has In the former case, at the landscape level, issues like multiple criteria for various ecosystem services, forest owner behavior regulating forest management, and the ecosystem functioning comes at the forefront. The latter area, the forest holding problem, has more to do with finding optimal solutions as specified by the owner. Both the landscape problem and the enterprise problem involve the use of optimization techniques,  in particular linear programming. My current involves both; analyzing the outcome in terms of different policies for biodiversity and social values of the forest landscape of Alvesta municipality (Forest Path project); support the development of new items in the family forester plan eliciting landscape aspects (Co-Creator project).

Most of my research is confined to a Swedish context. An exception is EU related research, which involves leading the COST Action FORSYS 2009-2013, coordinating FP7 project INTEGRAL 2011-2015, and co-coordinating Horizon project ALTERFOR 2016-2020. I am currently engaged in the COST Action DSS4ES. 

I got my Dr. of Forestry, SLU, in 1983, became Docent in forest economics, SLU, in 1993, and my professorship in Forest Management Planning, SLU, in 1995, a position I held until 2017. In two periods between 1988 and 1995 I served as Assistant professor, Department of Social Sciences, Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, mostly dedicating my time to the MBA program. I was commissioned head of the Department of Forest Resource Management and Geomatics in 1999-2007, the largest department of the Faculty of Forestry, SLU.

I have been main supervisor for 13 completed PhD projects and 4 Licentiate. I am currently member of one PhD supervisory group.

Most recent 20 publications (see also ORCID)

Eriksson, L. O., & Bergh, J. (2022). A Tool for Long-Term Forest Stand Projections of Swedish Forests. Forests, 13(6), 816. https://doi.org/10.3390/f13060816

Fagerberg, N., Lohmander, P., Eriksson, O., Olsson, J. O., Poudel, B. C., & Bergh, J. (2022). Evaluation of individual-tree growth models for Picea abies based on a case study of an uneven-sized stand in southern Sweden. Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research, 1-14.

Ezzati, S., Palma, C. D., Bettinger, P., Eriksson, L. O., & Awasthi, A. (2021). An integrated multi-criteria decision analysis and optimization modeling approach to spatially operational road repair decisions. Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 51(3), 465-483.

Eriksson, L. O., Forsell, N., Eggers, J., & Snäll, T. (2020). Downscaling of Long-Term Global Scenarios to Regions with a Forest Sector Model. Forests, 11(5), 500.

Biber P, Felton A, Nieuwenhuis M, … Eriksson LO, … (2020) Forest Biodiversity, Carbon Sequestration, and Wood Production: Modeling Synergies and Trade-Offs for Ten Forest Landscapes Across Europe. Front. Ecol. Evol. 8:547696. http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/20565

Lodin, I., Eriksson, L. O., Forsell, N., & Korosuo, A. (2020). Combining Climate Change Mitigation Scenarios with Current Forest Owner Behavior: A Scenario Study from a Region in Southern Sweden. Forests, 11(3), 346.

Eva-Maria Nordström , Maarten Nieuwenhuis , Emin Zeki Başkent, … Ljusk Ola Eriksson, .. (2019). Forest decision support systems for the analysis of ecosystem services provisioning at the landscape scale under global climate and market change scenarios. European Journal of Forest Research, 1-21.

Eyvindson, K., Saad, R., & Eriksson, L. O. (2017). Incorporating stand level risk management options into forest decision support systems. Forest Systems, 26 (3), e013. doi:10.5424/fs/2017263-10445

Forsell, N., Eriksson, O. L., Athanassiadis, D., & Assoumou, E. (2018). Swedish Forest Harvest Level Considering Demand of Biomass for Energy Purposes. FORMATH, 17, 17-003.

Sotirov, M., Sallnäs, O., & Eriksson, L. O. (2017). Forest owner behavioral models, policy changes, and forest management. An agent-based framework for studying the provision of forest ecosystem goods and services at the landscape level. Forest Policy and Economics.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2017.10.015

Nilsson, M., Staal Wästerlund, D., Wahlberg, O., & Eriksson, L. O. (2017). The use of forest information in timber sales planning–a case study in a Swedish forest-owning company. Scandinavian journal of forest research, 32(4), 320-326.

Christophe Orazio, Rebeca Cordero Montoya, Margot Régolini, … Ljusk Ola Eriksson, … (2017). Decision support tools and strategies to simulate forest landscape evolutions integrating forest owner behaviour: a review from the case studies of the European project, INTEGRAL. Sustainability, 9(4), 599.

Nobre, S., Eriksson, L. O., & Trubins, R. (2016). The use of decision support systems in forest management: analysis of forsys country reports. Forests, 7(3), 72.

St John, R., Öhman, K., Tóth, S. F., Sandström, P., Korosuo, A., & Eriksson, L. O. (2016). Combining spatiotemporal corridor design for reindeer migration with harvest scheduling in Northern Sweden. Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research, 31(7), 655-663.

Vacik, H., Borges, J. G., Garcia-Gonzalo, J., & Eriksson, L. O. (2015). Decision Support for the Provision of Ecosystem Services under Climate Change: An Editorial. Forests, 6(9), 3212-3217.

Carlsson, J., Eriksson, L. O., Öhman, K., & Nordström, E. M. (2015). Combining scientific and stakeholder knowledge in future scenario development—A forest landscape case study in northern Sweden. Forest Policy and Economics. doi:10.1016/j.forpol.2015.08.008

Peter Biber, José G. Borges, Ralf Moshammer, … Ljusk Ola Eriksson, … 2015. How Sensitive Are Ecosystem Services in European Forest Landscapes to Silvicultural Treatment?. Forests, 6(5), 1666-1695.

"Frank Susanne, Christine Fürst, Anže Japelj, Primož Simončič, Kyle Eyvindson, Annika Kangas, Jussi Rasinmäki, Renats Trubins, Ljusk-Ola Eriksson, Robert Barkowski 2015. RegioPower-an online platform for interactive tools for participatory landscape assessment and planning. Co-design and co-production of knowledge in land system science. GLP News, Issue No. 11, April 2015, pp. 12-15."

"José G. Borges, Ljusk Ola Eriksson 2014. Foreword (Special Issue:   Decision Support Systems for Sustainable Forest Management). Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research Volume 29, Supplement 1, 2014. DOI: 10.1080/02827581.2014.951513"

Fjeld, D., D’Amours, S., Eriksson, L. O., Frisk, M., Lemieux, S., Marier, P., & Rönnqvist, M. 2014. Developing training for industrial wood supply management. International Journal of Forest Engineering, 25(2), 101-112.

Borges, Jose G and Nordström , Eva -Maria and Garcia Gonzalo, Jordi and Hujala, Teppo and Trasobares, Antonio, eds. (2014). Computer-based tools for supporting forest management. The experience and the expertise world-wide. Dept of Forest Resource Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Umeå. Sweden. (503 pages) http://pub.epsilon.slu.se/11417/