The remnant natural boreal forest green belt of the Scandinavian mountain range
Svensson, J., Mikusinski, G., Jonsson, B. G., Andersson, J. and Bubnicki, J. (2018). The remnant natural boreal forest green belt of the Scandinavian mountain range. 5th European Congress of Conservation Biology. doi: 10.17011/conference/eccb2018/107733
Authors
Date
2018Copyright
© the Authors, 2018
To meet environmental goals and principles of sustainable forest and landscape management, arguments and knowledge accumulate on the need to increase forest protection and expanding restoration and conservation-oriented management. Certain attention has been given to regions where large, contagious natural forest areas still remain, and to interior forest core areas that due to distance to edge disturbance have developed continuity characteristics. A general assumption is that large continuity areas contain highly valuable ecosystem attributes that should be preserved per se, but also to spread into the surrounding forest landscape. In this study we analyzed the structural and functional connectivity of boreal continuity forests. We analyzed a comprehensive data set consisting of a remote sensing-based chronosequence mapping covering 11.7 million ha of the boreal biome in Sweden, where forests in that have not been subject to harvesting during the last 60-70 years have been identified. This data represents a high-resolution, complete and consistent trajectory of remnant forest patches that broadly covers the most intensive, industrial forest management era. Our study objectives were to analyze the structural and functional connectivity characteristics, to assess the center to periphery and matrix relationships for interior forest core areas, and to define existing larger, connected components of remaining natural forest as landscape-level hotspots for a functional green infrastructure. Through density and network analyses we defined a “green belt” consisting of connected natural and near-natural forest south-to-north along the foothills zone of the Scandinavian mountain range. We also found a more or less completely disrupted connection west-to-east with a few isolated components in the inland and coastal areas. The forest land area outside the components represent a peripheral matrix where continuity values are lost but where directed restoration and adapted forest management should be directed to support the ecological functionality of protected forests.
...
Publisher
Open Science Centre, University of JyväskyläConference
ECCB2018: 5th European Congress of Conservation Biology. 12th - 15th of June 2018, Jyväskylä, Finland
Original source
https://peerageofscience.org/conference/eccb2018/107733/Metadata
Show full item recordCollections
- ECCB 2018 [712]
License
Related items
Showing items with similar title or keywords.
-
Restoring forests by bark beetle outbreaks – implications from mountain forest flagship species
Kortmann, Mareike; Thorn, Simon (Open Science Centre, University of Jyväskylä, 2018)Although forest managers have tried to supress natural disturbances, such as windstorms, wildfire and outbreaks of insect pests, climate change has led to increasing frequencies and intensities of natural disturbances in ... -
Human disturbance on Polylepis mountain forests in Peruvian Andes
Raudaskoski, Anna (2014)Vuoristot kattavat 20–25 % maapallon pinta-alasta ja niiden alueella kasvaa noin 28 % maapallon metsistä. Vuoristometsät ovat monella tapaa arvokkaita: ne tarjoavat useita ekosysteemipalveluita ja raaka-aineita sekä ... -
Structural complexity in managed and strictly protected mountain forests: effects on the habitat suitability for indicator bird species
Braunisch, Veronika; Roder, Stefanie; Coppes, Joy; Bollmann, Kurt (Open Science Centre, University of Jyväskylä, 2018)Increasing the proportion of unmanaged forest in multi-functional forest landscapes is a central goal of international and national conservation strategies. However, the structural development in newly created forest ... -
Changes in species interactions within the cavity-using community in managed forest landscapes of the boreal mixedwood forest in eastern Canada
Drapeau, Pierre; Cadieux, Philippe; Deschenes, Rejean; Imbeau, Louis (Open Science Centre, University of Jyväskylä, 2018)Over the last 50 years the intensive use of even-aged management practices in the boreal forest of Canada has generated extensive landscapes of aggregated clear-cuts, which have considerably skewed the age structure of the ... -
Persistence of boreal forest epiphytes under alternative objective-driven forest management scenarios
Fabritius, Henna; Eggers, Jeannette; Snäll, Tord (Open Science Centre, University of Jyväskylä, 2018)Epiphytes need to colonize new suitable host trees before their existing host trees disappear in order to persist in forest landscapes. Thus, their persistence may be threatened by accelerated dynamics of intensive forest ...