Environmental history determines forest habitat network functionality: The need for landscape planning in Sweden

Abstract

Harvesting naturally dynamic forests causes losses of habitat quality and functional connectivity. Focusing on Sweden as a case study of high-yield rotation forestry, we provide analyses supporting spatial prioritisation of protection, management and restoration of representative functional forest habitat networks. Habitat suitability index modelling of focal bird species was used to analyse how forest naturalness, habitat patch size and functional connectivity affect representative forest habitat networks in Sweden’s five ecoregions. Habitat modelling for the least demanding bird species showed that of the mountain ecoregion 57–77% was functional, but in the other three boreal ecoregions only 8–9% were functional. For nemoral forests, the proportions of functional habitat networks were

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