Abstract

Managing forest landscapes to sustain functional connectivity is considered one of the key strategies to counteract the negative effects of climate and human-induced changes in forest species pools. With this objective, we evaluated whether a robust network of forest connecting elements can be identified so that it remains efficient when facing different types of potential land cover changes that may affect forest habitat networks and ecological fluxes. For this purpose we considered changes both in the forested areas and in the non-forest intervening landscape matrix. We combined some of the most recent developments in graph theory with models of land cover permeability and least-cost analysis through the forest landscape. We focused on a case of study covering the habitat of a forestdwelling bird (nuthatch, Sitta europaea) in the region of Galicia (NW Spain). Seven land-use change scenarios were analysed for their effects on connecting forest elements (patches and links): one was the simplest case in which the landscape is represented as a binary forest/non-forest pattern (and where matrix heterogeneity is disregarded), four scenarios in which forest lands were converted to other cover types (to scrubland due to wildfires, to extensive and intensive agriculture, and to urban areas), and two scenarios that only involved changes in the non-forested matrix (renaturalization and intensification). Our results show that while the network of connecting elements for the species was very robust to the conversion of the forest habitat patches to different cover types, the different change scenarios in the landscape matrix could more significantly weaken its long-term validity and effectiveness. This is particularly the case when most of the key connectivity providers for the nuthatch are located outside the protected areas or public forests in Galicia, where biodiversity-friendly measures might be more easily implemented. We discuss how the methodology can be applied to a wide range of forest landscape management situations, where both the conservation of the forest critical areas and an adequate management of the landscape matrix between them are of concern to achieve the sustainability of the ecological flows and ecosystem services at the wider forest landscape scale.

Highlights

  • Biodiversity is a multi-scale concept, which implies that the conservation of forest biodiversity should be carried out from the level of a single stand and species to regional and landscape levels comprising complex species pools and the relationships between them (Lindenmayer et al, 2006)

  • A landscapelevel approach that promotes forest landscape heterogeneity and connectivity could be one of the best strategies to (1) ensure the sustainability and multifunctionality of forest management, (2) counteract the possible negative effects of climatic and socioeconomic changes on the goods and services provided by woodland habitats, and to (3) increase the ability of the forest-dwelling species to adapt to the changes and dynamics that act at a variety of scales (Saura, 2010)

  • We considered a median dispersal distance of 3 km for the Sitta europaea, which corresponded to 168,000 cost units in the resistance surface that resulted from the procedure just described

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Summary

Introduction

Biodiversity is a multi-scale concept, which implies that the conservation of forest biodiversity should be carried out from the level of a single stand and species to regional and landscape levels comprising complex species pools and the relationships between them (Lindenmayer et al, 2006) In this context, a landscapelevel approach that promotes forest landscape heterogeneity and connectivity could be one of the best strategies to (1) ensure the sustainability and multifunctionality of forest management, (2) counteract the possible negative effects of climatic and socioeconomic changes on the goods and services provided by woodland habitats, and to (3) increase the ability of the forest-dwelling species to adapt to the changes and dynamics that act at a variety of scales (Saura, 2010). When referring to land use or land cover changes, we can find key processes such as rural abandonment, agricultural intensification (De Aranzabal et al, 2008) or urban development (Mitsova et al, 2011), among others These processes can affect both the forest habitat patches and the landscape matrix, determining the effective levels of connectivity between distant populations. This could assure the long-term success and effectiveness of forest conservation planning and related management measures

Methods
Results
Conclusion

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