Abstract

The concept of Woodland Key Habitats (WKH, small-scaled presumed hotspots of biodiversity) has become an essential component of biodiversity conservation in Fennoscandian and Baltic forests. There have been debates over the importance of WKHs in relation to the conservation of biodiversity in production forests. We applied a systematic review protocol and meta-analysis to summarize knowledge on comparisons of biodiversity qualities, such as dead wood and species richness, between WKHs and production forests in relevant countries. We also summarized the knowledge on the impact of edge effects by comparing WKHs surrounded by production forests to WKHs surrounded by clear cuts. Studies had been conducted in Finland, Norway and Sweden. Based on our meta-analysis, WKHs seem to be relative hotspots for dead wood volume, diversity of dead wood, number of species and number of red-listed species. There were some differences also between countries in these biodiversity qualities. Only two studies compared WKHs surrounded by production forests and clear cuts, respectively. Hence, the capability of WKHs to maintain their original species composition and support species persistence over time remains to be addressed, as well as their role in relation to other conservation tools. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Biodiversity; Conservation; Evidence-based; Meta-analysis; Production forests; WKH

Published in

Biological Conservation
2011, Volume: 144, number: 8, pages: 2061-2067 Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD

SLU Authors

• Gustafsson, Lena

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Associated SLU-program

SLUsystematic


Sustainable Development Goals

SDG15 Life on land


UKÄ Subject classification

Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use
Forest Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2011.02.016

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/57068