0000000000346887
AUTHOR
Sandra Ikauniece
Linking woodland key habitat inventory and forest inventory data to prioritize districts needing conservation efforts
Woodland key habitat (WKH) inventories have been conducted in northern European countries, with the aim to create networks of minimally disturbed forest stands for protection. The goal of national forest inventory is to provide information relevant to forest management, such as on forest types, trees species composition, age structure and wood volume. The aim of this study was to link these two inventory databases to identify districts of Latvia most deficient in connectivity and habitat quality, in order to prioritize districts needing conservation effort. As an example, the area of deciduous forest with nemoral tree species (oak, ash, lime, maple and elm) and aspen was chosen. These fores…
Dynamics of natural hemiboreal woodland in the Moricsala Reserve, Latvia: the studies of K. R. Kupffer revisited
Abstract Karl Reinhold Kupffer (1872–1935), an outstanding botanist and plant ecologist, took the initiative that led to the establishment of the first nature reserve in Latvia, on Moricsala Island in 1912. The reserve provided an excellent reference area for natural hemiboreal woodland for future generations. There have been very few studies on the dynamics of natural broadleaved forest in Europe, probably owing to lack of primeval forests of this type. However, Kupffer produced a map of forest types in the reserve with accurate descriptions of the vegetation by layers, and his descriptions include interpretations of forest dynamics processes. This information, together with the present ag…
Effect of soil and canopy factors on vegetation of Quercus robur woodland in the boreo-nemoral zone: A plant-trait based approach
Abstract The aim of the study was to determine the effect of soil and canopy on the understory vegetation of Quercus robur stands in Latvia, located in the boreo-nemoral zone. To determine the main processes regulating formation of the plant communities, the understory vegetation of Q. robur stands was described using plant traits. Vegetation and soils were described in 24 plots representing contrasting soil types and tree species composition. Redundancy analysis was used to determine the relation between vegetation, described using plant traits (proportion of species with each trait), and soil and canopy factors. About 50% of the variation in vegetation described by plant traits was explai…
Challenges of ecological restoration: Lessons from forests in northern Europe
The alarming rate of ecosystem degradation has raised the need for ecological restoration throughout different biomes and continents. North European forests may appear as one of the least vulnerable ecosystems from a global perspective, since forest cover is not rapidly decreasing and many ecosystem services remain at high level. However, extensive areas of northern forests are heavily exploited and have lost a major part of their biodiversity value. There is a strong requirement to restore these areas towards a more natural condition in order to meet the targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Several northern countries are now taking up this challenge by restoring forest biodiv…