Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T08:05:46.991Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Setting conservation targets: past and present approaches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Bengt Gunnar Jonsson  and
Marc-André Villard
Edited by
Marc-André Villard  and
Bengt Gunnar Jonsson
Bengt Gunnar Jonsson
Affiliation:
Sweden University, Sweden
Marc-André Villard
Affiliation:
Université de Moncton, Canada
Marc-André Villard
Affiliation:
Université de Moncton, Canada
Bengt Gunnar Jonsson
Affiliation:
Mid-Sweden University, Sweden
Get access

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Biodiversity is a term now commonly used in the political arena. However, it has a fairly strict definition that is widely recognized in ecology. In essence, biodiversity refers to genes, species, and ecosystems as levels of organization, and it includes ecosystem structure and function (Noss 1990). These different aspects of biodiversity must also be the starting point for setting conservation goals for forest landscapes. However, when applied to forest management, biodiversity objectives must be broken down into measurable targets based on clear and, preferably, functional links to the overall goals.

Around the world, relatively pristine forest ecosystems have been preserved through the foresight of a few individuals, have been restored at great cost, or they simply persisted by default owing to slow economic development. In regions that are still undeveloped (e.g. portions of the boreal forest or the Amazon basin), targets may be set as proactive measures to limit impacts of foreseeable economic development (see also Chapter 4, this volume). In regions where conservation planning has maintained an intermediate level of ecological integrity, targets must still be set to protect sensitive species or critical ecological processes (see Chapters 8, 9, and 10, this volume). Finally, conservation targets may also represent useful tools to monitor the success of ecological restoration (see Chapter 11, this volume) in regions where major habitat loss and conversion have taken place.

Any specific target is relevant to a temporal and spatial domain. In addition, it may relate to different levels of conservation ambition.

Type
Chapter
Information
Setting Conservation Targets for Managed Forest Landscapes , pp. 9 - 29
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agardy, T., Bridgewater, P., Crosby, M. P.et al. 2003. Dangerous targets? Unresolved issues and ideological clashes around marine protected areas. Aquatic Conservation – Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 13:353–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akçakaya, H. R. 2004. Using models for species conservation and management. Pp. 3–14 in Akçakaya, H. R.et al. (eds.) Species Conservation and Management. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Akçakaya, H. R., Radeloff, V. C., Mladenoff, D. J. and He, H. S.. 2004. Integrating landscape and metapopulation modeling approaches: viability of the Sharp-tailed Grouse in a dynamic landscape. Conservation Biology 18:526–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andelman, S. J. and Fagan, W. F.. 2000. Umbrellas and flagships: efficient conservation surrogates or expensive mistakes?Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 97:5954–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Angelstam, P. K. 1998. Maintaining and restoring biodiversity in European boreal forests by developing natural disturbance regimes. Journal of Vegetation Science 9:593–602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Angelstam, P., Boutin, S., Schmiegelow, F.et al. 2004. Targets for biodiversity conservation – a rationale for macroecological research and adaptive management. Ecological Bulletins 51:487–509.Google Scholar
Arponen, A., Heikkinen, R. K., Thomas, C. D. and Moilanen, A.. 2005. The value of biodiversity in reserve selection: representation, species weighting, and benefit functions. Conservation Biology 19:2009–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Attiwill, P. M. 1994. The disturbance of forest ecosystems: the ecological basis for conservative management. Forest Ecology and Management 63:247–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aune, K., Jonsson, B. G. and Moen, J.. 2005. Isolation and edge effects among woodland key habitats in Sweden: making fragmentation into forest policy?Biological Conservation 124:89–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baguette, M. and Schtickzelle, N.. 2003. Local population dynamics are important to the conservation of metapopulations in highly fragmented landscapes. Journal of Applied Ecology 40:404–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beissinger, S. R. and McCullough, D. R. (eds.) 2002. Population Viability Analysis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Berg, Å., Ehnström, B., Gustafsson, L.et al. 1994. Threatened plant, animal, and fungus species in Swedish forests – distribution and habitat associations. Conservation Biology 8:718–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergman, K. O., Askling, J., Ekberg, O.et al. 2004. Landscape effects on butterfly assemblages in an agricultural region. Ecography 27:619–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Betts, M. G., Forbes, G. J. and Diamond, A. W.. 2007. Thresholds in songbird occurrence in relation to landscape structure. Conservation Biology 21:1046–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blakesley, D., Pakkad, G., James, C., Torre, F. and Elliott, S.. 2004. Genetic diversity of Castanopsis acuminatissima (Bl.) A. DC. in northern Thailand and the selection of seed trees for forest restoration. New Forests 27:89–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonn, A. and Schröder, B.. 2001. Habitat models and their transfer for single and multi species groups: a case study in an alluvial forest. Ecography 24:483–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Botkin, D. B., Janak, J. F. and Wallis, J. R.. 1972. Some ecological consequences of a computer model of forest growth. Journal of Ecology 60:849–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burgman, M. A., Lindenmayer, D. B. and Elith, J.. 2005. Managing landscapes for conservation under uncertainty. Ecology 86:2007–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bütler, R., Angelstam, P., Ekelund, P. and Schlaepfer, R.. 2004a. Dead wood threshold values for the three-toed woodpecker presence in boreal and sub-Alpine forest. Biological Conservation 75:227–43.Google Scholar
Bütler, R., Angelstam, P. and Schlaepfer, R.. 2004b. Quantitative snag targets for the three-toed woodpecker Picoides tridactylus. Ecological Bulletins 51:219–32.Google Scholar
Cabeza, M. and Moilanen, A.. 2003. Site-selection algorithms and habitat loss. Conservation Biology 17:1402–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caro, T. M. and Doherty, G.. 1999. On the use of surrogate species in conservation biology. Conservation Biology 13:805–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crooks, K. R. and Sanjayan, M. (eds.) 2006. Connectivity Conservation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef
Cumming, G. S. 2000. Using between model comparison to fine-tune linear models of species ranges. Journal of Biogeography 27:441–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desmet, P. and Cowling, R.. 2004. Using the species-area relationship to set baseline targets for conservation. Ecology and Society 9(2):11. Available online at www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art11/.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edenius, L., Brodin, T. and White, N.. 2004. Occurrence of Siberian jay Perisoreus infaustus in relation to amount of old forest at landscape and home range scale. Ecological Bulletins 51:241–7.Google Scholar
Edenius, L. and Mikusiński, G.. 2006. Utility of habitat suitability models as biodiversity assessment tools in forest management. Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research 21 (suppl. 7):62–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edman, M., Gustafsson, M., Stenlid, J., Jonsson, B. G. and Ericson, L.. 2004. Spore deposition of wood-decaying fungi – importance of landscape composition. Ecography 27:103–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Etienne, R. S. and Heesterbeek, J. A. P.. 2001. Rules of thumb for conservation of metapopulations based on a stochastic winking-patch model. American Naturalist 158:389–407.Google Scholar
Flather, C. H. and Bevers, M.. 2002. Patchy reaction-diffusion and population abundance: the relative importance of habitat amount and arrangement. American Naturalist 159:40–56.Google ScholarPubMed
Frank, K. 2004. Ecologically differentiated rules of thumb for habitat network design – lessons from a formula. Biodiversity and Conservation 13:189–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, K. 2005. Metapopulation persistence in heterogeneous landscapes: lessons about the effect of stochasticity. American Naturalist 165:374–88.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frankham, R. 2003. Genetics and conservation biology. Comptes Rendus Biologie 326:S22-S29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gobeil, J.-F. and Villard, M.-A.. 2002. Permeability of three boreal forest landscape types to bird movements as determined from experimental translocations. Oikos 98:447–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guénette, J.-S. and Villard, M.-A.. 2004. Do empirical thresholds truly reflect species tolerances to habitat alteration?Ecological Bulletins 51:163–71.Google Scholar
Guénette, J.-S. and Villard, M.-A.. 2005. Thresholds in forest bird response to habitat alteration as quantitative targets for conservation. Conservation Biology 19:1168–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guisan, A. and Zimmermann, N. E.. 2000. Predictive habitat distribution models in Ecology. Ecological Modelling 135:147–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guisan, A., Edwards, T. C. and Hastie, T.. 2002. Generalized linear and generalized additive models in studies of species distributions: setting the scene. Ecological Modelling 157:89–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guttierez, D. 2005. Effectiveness of existing reserves in the long-term protection of a regionally rare butterfly. Conservation Biology 19:1586–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanski, I. 1999. Metapopulation Ecology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hanski, I. and Ovaskainen, O.. 2000. The metapopulation capacity of a fragmented landscape. Nature 404:755–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hayden, T. J., Faaborg, J. and Clawson, R. L.. 1985. Estimates of minimum area requirements for Missouri (USA) forest birds. Transactions of the Missouri Academy of Sciences 19:11–22.Google Scholar
He, H. S. and Mladenoff, D. J.. 1999. Spatially explicit and stochastic simulation of forest landscape fire disturbance and succession. Ecology 80:81–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobson, K. A. and Schieck, J.. 1999. Changes in bird communities in boreal mixedwood forest: harvest and wildfire effects over 30 years. Ecological Applications 9:849–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Homan, R. N., Windmiller, B. S. and Reed, J. M.. 2004. Critical thresholds associated with habitat loss for two vernal pool-breeding amphibians. Ecological Applications 14:1547–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imbeau, L. and Desrochers, A.. 2002. Foraging ecology and use of drumming trees by three-toed woodpeckers. Journal of Wildlife Management 66:222–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ito, S., Ishigami, S., Mizoue, N. and Buckley, G. P.. 2006. Maintaining plant species composition and diversity of understory vegetation under strip-clearcutting forestry in conifer plantations in Kyushu, southern Japan. Forest Ecology and Management 231:234–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jonsson, M., Ranius, T., Ekvall, H.et al. 2006. Cost-effectiveness of silvicultural measures to increase substrate availability for red-listed wood-living organisms in Norway spruce forests. Biological Conservation 127:443–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klenner, W., Kurz, W. and Beukema, S.. 2000. Habitat patterns in forested landscapes: management practices and uncertainty associated with natural disturbances. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 27:243–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kliskey, A. D., Lofroth, E. C., Thompson, W. A., Brown, S. and Schreier, H.. 1999. Simulating and evaluating alternative resource-use strategies using GIS-based habitat suitability indices. Landscape and Urban Planning 45:163–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambeck, R. J. 1997. Focal-species: a multi-species umbrella for nature conservation. Conservation Biology 11:849–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larson, M. A., Thompson, F. R., Millspaugh, J. J., Dijak, W. D. and Shifley, S. R.. 2004. Linking population viability, habitat suitability, and landscape simulation models for conservation planning. Ecological Modelling 180:103–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Legendre, P. and Legendre, L.. 1998. Numerical Ecology. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Levins, R. 1968. Evolution in Changing Environments. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Li, H., Gartner, D. I., Mou, P. and Trettin, C. C.. 2000. A landscape model (LEEMATH) to evaluate effects of management impacts on timber and wildlife habitat. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 27:263–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindenmayer, D. B. and McCarthy, M. A.. 2006. Evaluation of PVA models of arboreal marsupials: coupling models with long-term monitoring data. Biodiversity and Conservation 15:4079–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindenmayer, D. B., Manning, A. D., Smith, P. L.et al. 2002. The focal-species approach and landscape restoration: a critique. Conservation Biology 16:338–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macdonald, S. E. 2007. Effects of partial post-fire salvage harvesting on vegetation communities in the boreal mixedwood forest region of northeastern Alberta, Canada. Forest Ecology and Management 239:21–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manel, S., Williams, H. C. and Ormerod, S. J.. 2001. Evaluating presence–absence models in ecology: the need to account for prevalence. Journal of Applied Ecology 38:921–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, T. G., Kuhnert, P. M., Mengersen, K. and Possingham, H. P.. 2005. The power of expert opinion in ecological models using Bayesian methods: impact of grazing on birds. Ecological Applications 15:266–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marzluff, J. M., Millspaugh, J. J., Ceder, K. R.et al. 2002. Modeling changes in wildlife habitat and timber revenues in response to forest management. Forest Science 48:191–202.Google Scholar
McCune, B. 2006. Non-parametric habitat models with automatic interactions. Journal of Vegetation Science 17:819–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McIntire, E. J. B. and Fortin, M. J.. 2006. Structure and function of wildfire and mountain pine beetle forest boundaries. Ecography 29:309–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mikusiński, G., Gromadzki, M. and Chylarecki, P.. 2001. Woodpeckers as indicators of forest bird diversity. Conservation Biology 15:208–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mladenoff, D. J. 2004. LANDIS and forest landscape models. Ecological Modelling 180:7–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moilanen, A. 2007. Landscape zonation, benefit functions and target-based planning: unifying reserve selection strategies. Biological Conservation 134:571–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moilanen, A. and Nieminen, M.. 2002. Simple connectivity measures in spatial ecology. Ecology 83:1131–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, W. F. and Doak, D. F.. 2002. Quantitative Conservation Biology. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.Google Scholar
Muradian, R. 2001. Ecological thresholds: a survey. Ecological Economics 38:7–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
,NB-DNR. 2005. Habitat Definitions for Old Forest Habitat in New Brunswick. Fredericton, NB: Department of Natural Resources, Government of New Brunswick.Google Scholar
Noss, R. F. 1990. Indicators for monitoring biodiversity: a hierarchical approach. Conservation Biology 4:355–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nunney, L. and Campbell, K. A.. 1993. Assessing minimum viable population size: demography meets population genetics. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 8:234–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Öhman, K. and Lämås, T.. 2005. Reducing forest fragmentation in long-term forest planning by using the shape index. Forest Ecology and Management 212:346–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Öhman, L. and Eriksson, L. O.. 1998. The core area concept in forming contiguous areas for long-term forest planning. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 28:1032–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Økland, T., Rydgren, K., Økland, R. H., Storaunet, K. O. and Rolstad, J.. 2003. Variation in environmental conditions, understorey species number, abundance and composition among natural and managed Piceabies forest stands. Forest Ecology and Management 177:17–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ouborg, N. J., Vergeer, P. and Mix, C.. 2006. The rough edges of the conservation genetics paradigm for plants. Journal of Ecology 94:1233–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ovaskainen, O. and Hanski, I.. 2003. How much does an individual habitat fragment contribute to metapopulation dynamics and persistence?Theoretical Population Biology 64:481–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pacala, S. W., Canham, C. D. and Silander, J. A.. 1993. Forest models defined by field measurements. I. The design of a northeastern forest simulator. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 23:1980–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearce, J. L. and Boyce, M. S.. 2006. Modelling distribution and abundance with presence-only data. Journal of Applied Ecology 43:405–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pennanen, J. and Kuuluvainen, T.. 2002. A spatial simulation approach to natural forest landscape dynamics in boreal Fennoscandia. Forest Ecology and Management 164:157–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penttilä, R., Siitonen, J. and Kuusinen, M.. 2004. Polypore diversity and old-growth boreal Picea abies forests in southern Finland. Biological Conservation 117:271–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pressey, R. L., Possingham, H. P. and Day, J. R.. 1997. Effectiveness of alternative heuristic algorithms for identifying indicative minimum requirements for conservation reserves. Biological Conservation 80:207–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ranius, T. and Fahrig, L.. 2006. Targets for maintenance of dead wood for biodiversity conservation based on extinction thresholds. Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research 21:210–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ranius, T. and Kindvall, O.. 2004. Modelling the amount of coarse woody debris produced by the new biodiversity-oriented silvicultural practices in Sweden. Biological Conservation 119:51–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reed, D. H. 2005. Relationship between population size and fitness. Conservation Biology 19:563–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reed, D. H., O'Grady, J. J., Brook, B. W.et al. 2003. Estimates of minimum viable population sizes for vertebrates and factors influencing those estimates. Biological Conservation 113:23–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rempel, R. S., Andison, D. W. and Hannon, S. J.. 2004. Guiding principles for developing an indicator monitoring framework. Forestry Chronicle 80:82–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberge, J.-M. and Angelstam, P.. 2006. Indicator species among resident forest birds – a cross-regional evaluation in northern Europe. Biological Conservation 130:134–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenzweig, M. L. 1995. Species Diversity in Space and Time. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheller, R. M., Mladenoff, D. J., Crow, T. R. and Sickley, T. A.. 2005. Simulating the effects of fire reintroduction versus continued fire absence on forest composition and landscape structure in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, northern Minnesota, USA. Ecosystems 8:396–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schultz, C. B. and Crone, E. E.. 2005. Patch size and connectivity thresholds for butterfly habitat restoration. Conservation Biology 19:887–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seoane, J., Bustamante, J. and Diaz-Delgado, R.. 2005. Effect of expert opinion on the predictive ability of environmental models of bird distribution. Conservation Biology 19:512–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simberloff, D. 1998. Flagships, umbrellas, and keystones: is single-species management passé in the landscape era?Biological Conservation 84:247–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snäll, T., Pennanen, J., Kivisto, L. and Hanski, I. 2005. Modelling epiphyte metapopulation dynamics in a dynamic forest landscape. Oikos 109:209–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suorsa, P., Huhta, E., Jantti, A.et al. 2005. Thresholds in selection of breeding habitat by the Eurasian treecreeper (Certhia familiaris). Biological Conservation 121:443–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, C. D. 1990. What do real populations tell us about minimum viable population sizes?Conservation Biology 4:324–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tjorve, E. 2002. Habitat size and number in multi-habitat landscapes: a model approach based on species-area curves. Ecography 25:17–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Venier, L. A., Pearce, J. L., Wintle, B. A. and Bekessy, S. A.. 2007. Future forests and indicator-species population models. Forestry Chronicle 83:36–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, J., Freudenberger, D. and Paull, D.. 2001. An assessment of the focal-species approach for conserving birds in variegated landscapes in southeastern Australia. Conservation Biology 15:1364–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westphal, M. I., Pickett, M., Getz, W. M. and Possingham, H. P.. 2003. The use of stochastic dynamic programming in optimal landscape reconstruction for metapopulations. Ecological Applications 13:543–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wintle, B. A., Bekessy, S. A., Venier, L. A.et al. 2005. Utility of dynamic-landscape metapopulation models for sustainable forest management. Conservation Biology 19:1930–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×