Woodland key habitats in northern Europe: concepts, inventory and protection

Abstract

The woodland key habitat (WKH) concept has become an essential instrument in biodiversity-orientated forest management in northern Europe. The philosophy behind the concept is basically the same in all of the countries: to conserve the biodiversity of production landscapes by preserving small habitat patches that are supposed to be particularly valuable. This article reviews the definitions, inventories and implementation processes of WKHs in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Sweden and the Baltic countries have similar WKH models, while the models in Finland and Norway are clearly deviating. Depending on the country, the definitions emphasize different factors, such as soil and bedrock properties, stand structure and occurrence of indicator species. The mean size of the WKHs varies considerably, from 0.7 ha (Finland) to 4.6 ha (Sweden). The degree of formal protection also differs. Preservation of WKHs is primarily based on forest legislation in Finland, Estonia and Latvia, and on forest certification in the other countries. The implementation of the WKH concept is inconsistent between the countries, resulting in different sets of habitats being included in the WKH networks. This makes direct comparisons between the countries difficult, and may hamper the generalization of research results into other areas.

Tree retention as a conservation measure in clear-cut forests of northern Europe: a review of ecological consequences

“…For example, riparian buffer zones adjacent to small lakes and creeks are classified as key habitats in Finland (Timonen et al, 2010), while in Norway and Sweden they are part of the tree retention concept. Owing to this geographical difference, this habitat type was not included in the present overview of the literature.…”

“…small areas with high biodiversity values. Woodland key habitats have recently been mapped in large inventories in Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Baltic states, and their mean size varies between 0.7 and 4.6 ha (Timonen et al, 2010). Nature reserves represent the highest scale level, often embracing hundreds of hectares.…”

The history and future of fungi as biodiversity surrogates in forests

“…In Finland, the "old-growth forest indicator polypores", proposed by Kotiranta & Niemelä (1996) Outside Fennoscandia surrogate schemes have been used only to a limited extent. In Estonia the conservation biologists working for the government use a list of fungal surrogates to identify woodland key habitats, which is a North European conservation concept focusing on the protection of especially important forest sites (Timonen et al 2010). This list includes several fungal species and has a legal status (Anonymous 2010).…”

The assessment of vegetation in unmanaged nemoral forests in Zemgale

“…WKH structural elements are structures in forest, for example, living trees with various dimensions and dead wood, important for habitat specialist species (Ek et al, 2002;Timonen et al, 2010). We found significant differences (p < 0.05) in the volume of living trees: for broad-leaved WKHs in managed forests volume was on average 310.…”