Need for a global map of forest naturalness for a sustainable future

Abstract

There is a growing need to assess and monitor forest cover and its conservation status over global scales to determine human impact on ecosystems and to develop sustainability plans. Recent approaches to measure regional and global forest status and dynamics are based on remotely sensed estimates of tree cover. We argue that tree cover should not be used to assess the area of forest ecosystems because tree cover is an undefined subset of forest cover. For example, tree cover can indicate a positive trend even in the presence of deforestation, as in the case of plantations. We believe a global map of forest naturalness that accounts for the bio‐ecological integrity of forest ecosystems, for example, intact forests, old‐growth forest patches, rewilding forests (exploited forest landscapes undergoing long‐term natural succession), and managed forests is needed for global forest assessment.

Radiocarbon dating of Aspromonte sessile oaks reveals the oldest dated temperate flowering tree in the world

“…What is increasingly emerging is that mountains in temperate and boreal forest ecosystems, where the oldest trees on earth live (Schulman 1954, Liu et al 2019), have high conservation value. Habitat trees play an irreplaceable role in conservation biology (Lindenmayer and Laurance 2017) underlining the need for mapping mountain forest ecosystem of high naturalness value all over the world in order to protect them and achieve the goals of the United Nations Agenda 2030 for sustainable development (Goal 15: Target 15.4; see also Chiarucci and Piovesan 2020). Preserving biodiversity is a requirement for sustainable development, and the long‐life cycle of Aspromonte oaks is a reminder of the need for leaving adequate space for natural processes to take place.…”

Protection gaps and restoration opportunities for primary forests in Europe

“…In its National Strategy on Biological Diversity, Germany committed to protecting at least 5% of forested areas in wilderness areas (Schumacher, Finck, Riecken, & Klein, 2018). Yet, most international agreements (CBD, 2010; European Commission, 1992; UN General Assembly, 2015) do not explicitly refer to primary forest, which adds uncertainty to conservation objectives (Chiarucci & Piovesan, 2019; Mackey et al., 2015; Watson et al., 2018). Only recently the EU commission released a new “Biodiversity Strategy for 2030,” which emphasizes the need to define, map, monitor and strictly protect all of the EU's remaining primary and old‐growth forests (European Commission, 2020).…”

Long‐term changes in Italian mountain forests detected by resurvey of historical vegetation data

“…In our study area, this is the case with coppice stands (Müllerová, Hédl and Szabó, 2015), and chestnut grooves that were dominant landscape features as in other regions of the southern European mountains (Gondard et al, 2001;Pezzi, Maresi, Conedera, and Ferrari, 2011) 2. On the other hand, the rewilding process may overcome the challenges of sustainable development, contributing to the goals of protecting threatened species and habitats and of mitigating the impact of global warming (Kraus and Krumm, 2013;Sitzia et al, 2015;Chiarucci and Piovesan, 2019;Moomaw, Masino, and Faison, 2019) The Mediterranean area is one of the hot-spot of the global climatic crisis with several environmental problems (Cramer et al, 2018) and the rewilding landscape may be an effective strategy for carbon mitigation and biodiversity conservation (Sabatini et al, 2018b), with also an important buffering role toward the negative effect of climatic change (Filibeck et al, 2015;Betts et al, 2018).…”