Developing fine‐grained nationwide predictions of valuable forests using biodiversity indicator bird species

Abstract

The use of indicator species in forest conservation and management planning can facilitate enhanced preservation of biodiversity from the negative effects of forestry and other uses of land. However, this requires detailed and spatially comprehensive knowledge of the habitat preferences and distributions of selected focal indicator species. Unfortunately, due to limited resources for field surveys, only a small proportion of the occurrences of focal species is usually known. This shortcoming can be circumvented by using modeling techniques to predict the spatial distribution of suitable sites for the target species. Airborne laser scanning (ALS) and other remote sensing (RS) techniques have the potential to provide useful environmental data covering systematically large areas for these purposes. Here, we focused on six bird of prey and woodpecker species known to be good indicators of boreal forest biodiversity values. We used known nest sites of the six indicator species based on nestling ringing records. Thus, the most suitable nesting sites of these species provide important information for biodiversity‐friendly forest management and conservation planning. We developed fine‐grained, that is, 96 × 96 m grid cell resolution, predictive maps across the whole of Finland of the suitable nesting habitats based on ALS and other RS data and spatial information on the distribution of important forest stands for the six studied biodiversity indicator bird species based on nesting‐habitat suitability modeling, that is, the MaxEnt model. Habitat preferences of the study species, as determined by MaxEnt, were in line with the previous knowledge of species‐habitat relations. The proportion of suitable habitats of these species in protected areas (PAs) was considerable, but our analysis also revealed many potentially high‐quality forest stands outside PAs. However, many of these sites are increasingly threatened by logging because of increased pressures for using forests for bioeconomy and forest industry based on National Forest Strategy. Predicting habitat suitability based on information on the nest sites of indicator species provides a new tool for systematic conservation planning over large areas in boreal forests in Europe, and a corresponding approach would also be feasible and recommendable elsewhere where similar data are available.

Challenges and Solutions for Forest Biodiversity Conservation in Sweden: Assessment of Policy, Implementation Outputs, and Consequences

“…For Slovenia, Nagel et al [430] concluded that integrated management practiced on a large scale is insufficient to maintain viable populations of species dependent on naturally dynamic and old-growth forests. The same conclusion has been found in Finland [431,432] and Sweden [433]. Kuuluvainen et al [268] expressed this kind of mismatch as "The development of retention practices in Finland indicates that the aim has not been to use ecological understanding to attain specific ecological sustainability goals, but rather to define the lowest level of retention that still allows access to the market".…”

Assessing habitat connectivity of rare species to inform urban conservation planning

“…We used a 10 km buffer for background point selection (10,000 random points) for all species except Henslow's Sparrow and Northern Long‐Eared Bat, which had a 25 km buffer. The background point selection for presence only models should represent accessible area for the modeled species and, despite the low to moderate dispersal distances, we believe that the broader extent buffers are a better match to the scale of habitat selection for these volant species (Gómez‐Ruiz & Lacher, 2016 ; Monadjem et al., 2021 ; Virkkala et al., 2022 ; Zhang et al., 2018 ). These buffered regions served as the area for background point selection in all models.…”

A perspective on biodiversity data and applications for spatio-temporally robust spatial planning for area-based conservation

“…A number of protected areas, a central measure of area-based conservation [14], have been introduced globally to bend the species extinction curve. Moreover, recent technological improvements allow for mapping biodiversity features at fine resolutions (e.g., 100 m × 100 m) within a large spatial extent [15], which can substantially promote fine-tuned SCP.…”