Climate adaptation of biodiversity conservation in managed forest landscapes

Abstract

Conservation of biodiversity in managed forest landscapes needs to be complemented with new approaches given the threat from rapid climate change. Most frameworks for adaptation of biodiversity conservation to climate change include two major strategies. The first is the resistance strategy, which focuses on actions to increase the capacity of species and communities to resist change. The second is the transformation strategy and includes actions that ease the transformation of communities to a set of species that are well adapted to the novel environmental conditions. We suggest a number of concrete actions policy makers and managers can take. Under the resistance strategy, five tools are introduced, including: identifying and protecting forest climate refugia with cold‐favored species; reducing the effects of drought by protecting the hydrological network; and actively removing competitors when they threaten cold‐favored species. Under the transformation strategy, we suggest three tools, including: enhancing conditions for forest species favored by the new climate, but currently disfavored by forest management, by planting them at suitable sites outside their main range; and increasing connectivity across the landscape to enhance the expansion of warm‐favored species to sites that have become suitable. Finally, we suggest applying a landscape perspective and simultaneously managing for both retreating and expanding species. The two different strategies (resistance and transformation) should be seen as complementary ways to maintain a rich biodiversity in future forest ecosystems.

Changes in forest structure drive temperature preferences of boreal understorey plant communities

“…While this might be true at large spatial and temporal scales, we show that forest structure plays an important role for changes in forest understorey communities on short to intermediate time‐scales. This implies that increased buffering of forest microclimate temperatures due to increased forest densities, as advocated by the forest industry, might mitigate the effects of contemporary climate warming on understorey communities (De Lombaerde et al, 2021; Hylander et al, 2021; Richard et al, 2021; Zellweger et al, 2020). However, at the same time the common management regime in boreal regions with cycles of clear‐cutting, endangers the capacity of forest stands to serve as refugia for thermal‐sensitive species (Greiser et al, 2020; Richard et al, 2021).…”

High landscape‐scale forest cover favours cold‐adapted plant communities in agriculture–forest mosaics

“…Current climate warming is likely to have particularly harmful effects on cold‐adapted species, which may escape regional warming by retracting their range to climate refugia with locally cooler and more suitable microclimates (Corlett & Westcott, 2013; Hylander et al, 2022; Kuhn & Gégout, 2019). For forest species, these climatic refugia can be topographic features (e.g., cold air pooling inside valleys; Stark & Fridley, 2022), dense forests (Frey et al, 2016) or even hedgerows in open landscapes (Vanneste et al, 2020).…”

“…Our results however should not be used to undermine the importance of small forest patches in agriculture mosaics (Valdés et al, 2020). Forests in landscapes with limited forest cover harbour on average more warm‐adapted species, which are more suited to the warming climate and are more resilient in the face of disturbances that could rapidly remove the forest buffering capacity (Christiansen et al, 2021; Hylander et al, 2022). In addition, our results (Figure 3) show a linear decrease, without saturation, in CTI with increasing landscape‐scale forest cover; as a result, any amount of forest cover in the landscape can have an effect on CTI.…”

Ecosystem Conditions That Influence the Viability of an Old-Forest Species with Limited Vagility: The Red Tree Vole

“…Forest restoration treatments planned at landscape scales could be applied to restore ecological processes [ 76 ], and increase forest heterogeneity (e.g., intermixing different forest types and/or age classes) that could enhance forest resistance and resilience [ 77 ]. In addition to their greater resilience, heterogeneous forest landscapes, within which old-forest habitat are embedded, frequently support a wide range of ecosystem functions and services [ 78 ].…”