0000000001323944
AUTHOR
Marja Hokkanen
Red List of Ecosystems: assessing the quality of boreal forests in Finland
IUCN recently published guidelines for Red List of Ecosystems (RLE) risk assessment [1]. The RLE criteria include consideration of changes in an area and the geographic distribution of ecosystems but also of changes in the biotic and abiotic ecological quality of ecosystems. In widely distributed ecosystems, such as boreal forests in Finland, ecological quality is often more important than the spatial extent of an area in assessing threat status. Therefore, it is important to find quantitative variables that are good surrogates for the overall quality of an ecosystem. In the RLE assessment of Finland, we divided boreal forests into 40 ecosystem types. Of these, forests with mineral soils (1…
Spatial conservation prioritization of Finnish forests for more sustainable land use planning
Accelerating use of natural resources causing harmful impacts on biodiversity, together with limited resources for conservation, highlight the importance of developing cost-effective, ecologically sustainable land use planning approaches. In Finland, a recent conservation project “METSO - Forest Biodiversity Programme for Southern Finland” tackles the challenge of integrating conservation with sustainable forestry to halt the decline in forest species and habitats. A core element in METSO is the spatial conservation prioritization of forests to supplement the current protected area network, based on concepts of complementarity, and voluntarity. These analyses pave way towards new practices …
Ranking Natura 2000 habitats and Natura 2000 areas for nature
We ranked 1 541 Finnish Natura 2000 areas and their 69 different habitat types for ecological restoration and nature management based on their potential for cost-effective ecosystem improvement. We did it by Zonation software and its principles: complementarity, connectivity, condition and cost-effectiveness. We had biodiversity data (GIS: location and current state of 67 N2000 habitats and threatened species) and expert knowledge of improvement methods, effects and costs. As results we got maps, curves of trade-offs and also a ranking list of Natura 2000 areas. peerReviewed