Ecological Sustainability at the Forest Landscape Level: A Bird Assemblage Perspective

Ecological Sustainability at the Forest Landscape Level: A Bird Assemblage Perspective

Blog Article

Maintaining landscape integrity in terms of ecological functions is a key principle of sustainable forest management.Bird assemblages use all parts of forest landscapes and provide an opportunity to analyze their broad-scale integrity in those regions where bird census data are of sufficient quality and detail.In this study, I modelled likely landscape-composition consequences of different scenarios of even-aged (clear-cutting-based) silviculture on breeding-bird assemblages.The models were parameterized using high-quality territory-mapping data from Estonia.

I considered three approaches for obtaining the model parameters.Of these, (i) a formal analysis of rank-abundance curves was rejected due to the inconsistency of the curve shapes among habitat types.Two other approaches were used and complemented each other: MIXED MUSHROOMS (ii) smoothed forest-type specific functions of total assemblage densities along post-clear-cut succession, and (iii) empirical average densities of each species by forest type and age class (for species composition analyses).The modelling revealed a parallel Shaft Clutch Stepper loss of bird densities and, to a lesser extent, of species at shorter rotations; currently, this effect is disproportionately large on productive soils.

For conserving the productive hotspots, the 30% protection target of the EU Biodiversity Strategy overperformed other scenarios.In all landscape settings, typologically representative old-forest reserves (even artificially drained stands) helped to mitigate rotational forestry.The potential of even-aged production forestry to host early-successional species was already realized at much longer rotations than currently (given uniform stand-age structure).Comparing potential and realized bird assemblages provides a tool for assessing ecological integrity at the landscape scale, and the results can be used for elaborating regional management goals of ecologically sustainable forestry.