Are small protected habitat patches within boreal production forests effective in conserving species richness, abundance and community composition? A systematic review

Abstract

Background In boreal zone forest management is changing and degrading forest habitats, which has caused declines in biodiversity. To mitigate these harmful effects in production forests, small-scale habitats with high biodiversity values have been protected within them. These habitats include woodland key habitats, and other small habitat patches protected by voluntary conservation actions. In this systematic review we synthesize the evidence on the value of small protected habitat patches (SPHP) within production forest landscapes for biodiversity. Review question: Are small protected habitat patches within boreal production forests effective in conserving species richness, abundance, and community composition? Methods Both peer-reviewed and grey literature were searched from bibliographical databases, organizational websites and internet search engines in English, Finnish, Swedish and Russian. Articles were screened at two stages (title/abstract and full text) and the validity of the included studies were assessed. Screening and validity assessment were based on predetermined criteria. After data extraction, narrative and quantitative syntheses were conducted. Influences of effect modifiers were tested, and sensitivity analyses were conducted. Review findings During the searches 19,458 articles were found. After duplicate removal and title/abstract screening 336 articles remained. During full text screening 41 articles were included and 35 of them (174 studies) were included in narrative synthesis. 28 articles with 127 studies had suitable data for meta-analysis. SPHPs had significantly higher species richness compared to production forests. When compared to natural forests, there was no significant difference. Forest management in areas surrounding SPHPs did not have impact on species richness of these patches. Individual abundance was significantly higher in SPHPs compared to natural or production forests. There was significantly more dead wood in SPHPs compared to production forests, but when compared to natural forests there was no significant difference. Community composition was different between SPHPs and both production and natural forests. Conclusions The findings of this review show that small protected patches within production forests are important part of biodiversity conservation. They cannot substitute larger protected areas but supplement the protected area network. However, there were gaps both in geographical distribution of the studies as well as in the selection of target species of the studies. Therefore, generalization of the results must be done carefully.

Taxonomic revision of the highly threatened Eumerus tricolor species group (Diptera: Syrphidae) in Southeast Europe, with insights into the conservation of the genus Eumerus

“…One of the goals of the new strategy is the enlargement of existing Natura 2000 areas. Indeed, even though large reserves have a crucial role in conservation, it is important to remember that often well-preserved small patches of habitat might be biodiversity reservoirs (Wintle et al, 2019;Häkkilä et al, 2021), which is confi rmed in the case of Eumerus species in Southeast Europe.…”

“…Male genitalia were boiled in 10% KOH, rinsed in glacial acetic acid and alcohol and stored in microvials in glycerine, attached to appropriate specimens. Photographs were taken with a Nikon Coolpix D7100 digital camera attached to a Nikon SMZ 745T (Nikon Corporation, Tokyo, Japan) stereomicroscope and then processed in CombineZ 1.0 software (Hadley, 2012) and Adobe Photoshop CS3 V 10.0 software (Adobe Systems, San Jose, CA, USA).…”

Olive Trees By-Products as Sources of Bioactive and Other Industrially Useful Compounds: A Systematic Review

“…The assessment of bias risk, based on a checklist adapted from the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions [ 17 ] and Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) Guidelines and Standards for Evidence Synthesis in Environmental Management, in conformance to ROSES reporting standards [ 18 , 19 ] isreported in the bar graph of Figure 4 . The majority of included articles fall into the low-risk of bias category, enhancing the overall quality of the manuscript.…”

“…The methodological quality and the risk of bias assessment were carried out independently by the authors, using a checklist adapted from Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions , appropriately adjusted for animal intervention study (SYRCLE’s) [ 17 , 126 ] and clinical trials [ 127 ]. For the environmental study, the quality assessment was based on Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) Guidelines and Standards for Evidence Synthesis in Environmental Management, in conformance to ROSES reporting standards [ 18 , 19 ]. The appraisal of the methodological quality of the selected studies was based on the presence or absence of information regarding the main objectives and findings, randomization of the treatment allocation, sampling, blinded drug administration, blinded outcome assessment and outcome measurements, method description, number of replicates, as reported in Table 5 , Table 6 and Table 7 .…”

“… The assessment of bias risk is based on a checklist adapted from the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions [ 17 ] and Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) Guidelines and Standards for Evidence Synthesis in Environmental Management, in conformance to ROSES reporting standards [ 18 , 19 ]. The studies regarding the different biological activities and the industrial uses have been classified into high (red), medium (orange), and low (blue) risks of bias.…”