0000000001324659
AUTHOR
Jean-michel Roberge
Retention forestry and biodiversity conservation: a parallel with agroforestry
In forested landscapes two general management systems – retention forestry and agroforestry – have been proposed as potentially efficient components of landscape approaches to ease the conflict between biodiversity objectives and human needs. In two recent reviews, Gustafsson et al. (2012) and Lindenmayer et al. (2012) provide a global overview of current knowledge about the practice and ecological roles of retention forestry. A few years ago, Bhagwat et al. (2008) produced a similar review addressing the role of agroforestry in biodiversity conservation. Here we draw a parallel between research on the ecological effects of retention forestry and agroforestry. We argue that conservation sci…
Disentangling the effects of area, energy and habitat heterogeneity on boreal forest bird species richness in protected areas
Aim One of the few general laws in ecology is that species richness is a positive function of area. However, it has been proposed that area would merely be a proxy for energy. Additionally, habitat heterogeneity has been found to be an important factor determining species richness. Yet the relative importance of those relationships is little known, and it is still unclear how they are brought about. We aimed to dissect which factors drive the species richness of boreal forest birds, and to identify the most probable mechanisms. Location Forested protected areas in Finland. Methods Using bird line census data collected in 104 protected areas, we ran simultaneous autoregressive models to e…
Cost-efficient strategies to preserve dead wood-dependent species in a managed forest landscape
Negative consequences of intensive forest management on biodiversity are often mitigated by setting aside old forest, but alternative strategies have been suggested. We have compared using simulations the consequences of two of these alternatives setting aside young forests or extending rotation periods - to that of current practice in managed boreal forest In all scenarios we applied a constant conservation budget and predicted forest development and harvesting over 200 years. As a proxy for biodiversity conservation, we projected the extinction risk of a dead wood-dependent beetle, Diacanthous undulatus, in a 50 km(2) landscape in central Sweden, using a colonization-extinction model. Dur…
Calculating minimum discrepancy to assess the nestedness of species assemblages
Nestedness is a pattern whereby species-poor assemblages are composed of subsets of the species occurring in richer assemblages. One of the most commonly used measures of the degree of nestedness for presence-absence matrices is the ‘discrepancy’ metric. A hitherto neglected property of that metric is that it may take several values for a given site-by-species matrix in the presence of ties in the marginal totals. This complicates the quantification of nestedness for the observed presence-absence matrix, as well as the assessment of statistical significance, which is typically achieved through Monte Carlo simulations. A solution to the problem is to calculate the minimum discrepancy using a…
Projecting biodiversity and wood production in future forest landscapes: 15 key modeling considerations
A variety of modeling approaches can be used to project the future development of forest systems, and help to assess the implications of different management alternatives for biodiversity and ecosystem services. This diversity of approaches does however present both an opportunity and an obstacle for those trying to decide which modeling technique to apply, and interpreting the management implications of model output. Furthermore, the breadth of issues relevant to addressing key questions related to forest ecology, conservation biology, silviculture, economics, requires insights stemming from a number of distinct scientific disciplines. As forest planners, conservation ecologists, ecologica…
Energy density and its variation in space limit species richness of boreal forest birds
Aim An area’s ability to support species may be dependent not only on the total amount of available energy it contains but also on energy density (i.e. available energy per unit area). Acknowledging these two aspects of energy availability may increase mechanistic understanding of how increased energy availability results in increased species richness. We studied the relationship between energy density, its variation in space and boreal forest bird species richness and investigated two possible mechanisms: (1) metabolic constraints of organisms, and (2) increased resource availability for specialists. Location Protected areas in Finland’s boreal forest. Methods We tested whether bird spe…
Distribution of biodiversity in managed landscapes – can remotely sensed data be used to find biodiversity hot-spots?
Management of boreal forests for timber production has caused changes in forest structures and disturbance regimes, which have influenced distribution patterns and abundance for a wide range of organisms. The aim of this study was to evaluate how bird and beetle species composition is influenced by stand age and management history in a heavily managed boreal forest landscape and whether it is possible to find biodiversity hot spots in these landscapes using remotely sensed data. Taxa included was flying and epigaeic beetles, and birds. We first compared the assemblages among stands of three ages: 1) young (8-25 years) and 2) middle-aged (40-58 years) stands regrown after clear-cutting, and …