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Abstract
Forest inventory mapping is used worldwide to describe forests at a large spatial scale via the delimitation of portions of the landscape that are structurally homogeneous. Consequently, there is a significant amount of descriptive forest data in forest inventory maps, particularly with the development of ecosystem classification, which represents a significant potential for use in ecosystem based management. With this study we propose to test whether forest inventory maps can be used to describe not only stand characteristics but also dynamic processes. The results indicate that stand types identifiable in forest inventory maps do not in fact represent unique developmental stages, but rather confound stands at multiple developmental stages that may be undergoing different ecological processes. The reasons for this are linked to both the interaction between succession, fire severity and paludification. Finally, some aspects of the process of forest inventory mapping itself contribute to the disjunction between forest types and forest succession. Given the low similarity between spruce mapping types and their actual description following forest inventories, it would be too ambitious to infer the dynamic aspects of spruce forest by map units.
Highlights
Black spruce ecosystems dominate the boreal forests of eastern Canada, supporting an extensive forest industry and these forests are under significant management pressure
Ecosystem based management has been suggested as an approach to achieve sustainable forest management, as it focuses on reducing differences between natural and managed forests and forested landscapes [2]
Some aspects of the process of forest inventory mapping itself contribute to the disjunction between forest types and forest succession
Summary
Black spruce ecosystems dominate the boreal forests of eastern Canada, supporting an extensive forest industry and these forests are under significant management pressure. Ecosystem based management has been suggested as an approach to achieve sustainable forest management, as it focuses on reducing differences between natural and managed forests and forested landscapes [2] As such it is similar to the coarse filter approach from conservation biology [3], which suggests that the majority of species in a region can be conserved by protecting a proportion of all habitat types present in the natural landscapes of the region. For this approach to be successful, a forest landscape must be accurately described in terms of stand structure and composition in order to determine the type and relative abundance of different habitat types, in this case forest types. This potential has been exploited in the development of wildlife habitat assessments (e.g., [8,9])
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