1. Where are Europe’s last primary forests?
- Author
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Momchil Panayotov, Nicolas Debaive, William S. Keeton, Renzo Motta, Francesco Maria Sabatini, Bojan Simovski, Christian Levers, Miroslav Svoboda, Florian Pötzschner, Erik Buchwald, Nikolaos Grigoriadis, Jürgen Bauhus, Leónia Nunes, Olli-Pekka Tikkanen, Tomáš Vrška, Stjepan Mikac, Oleh Chaskovsky, Gintautas Mozgeris, Jonas Stillhard, Peter Meyer, Péter Ódor, Pieter Johannes Verkerk, Tobias Kuemmerle, Inês Duarte, Marcus Lindner, Rein Midteng, Matteo Garbarino, Sabina Burrascano, Jerzy Szwagrzyk, Roman Volosyanchuk, Alejandro Ruete, Ferenc Horváth, Tzvetan Zlatanov, Fabio Lombardi, Martin Mikoláš, Sabatini F.M., Burrascano S., Keeton W.S., Levers C., Lindner M., Potzschner F., Verkerk P.J., Bauhus J., Buchwald E., Chaskovsky O., Debaive N., Horvath F., Garbarino M., Grigoriadis N., Lombardi F., Marques Duarte I., Meyer P., Midteng R., Mikac S., Mikolas M., Motta R., Mozgeris G., Nunes L., Panayotov M., Odor P., Ruete A., Simovski B., Stillhard J., Svoboda M., Szwagrzyk J., Tikkanen O.-P., Volosyanchuk R., Vrska T., Zlatanov T., and Kuemmerle T.
- Subjects
0106 biological sciences ,010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,Sustainable forest management ,boosted regression trees ,010603 evolutionary biology ,01 natural sciences ,boosted regression trees, forest naturalness, land-use change, old-growth forest, primary forest, spatial determinants, sustainable forest management, virgin forest ,boosted regression tree ,spatial determinant ,land-use change ,old-growth forest ,primary forest ,Land use, land-use change and forestry ,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,Primary (chemistry) ,geography.geographical_feature_category ,forest naturalness ,spatial determinants ,sustainable forest management ,virgin forest ,Ecology ,Agroforestry ,15. Life on land ,Old-growth forest ,Geography ,forest naturalne - Abstract
Aim: Primary forests have high conservation value but are rare in Europe due to his-toric land use. Yet many primary forest patches remain unmapped, and it is unclear to what extent they are effectively protected. Our aim was to (1) compile the most com-prehensive European-scale map of currently known primary forests, (2) analyse the spatial determinants characterizing their location and (3) locate areas where so far unmapped primary forests likely occur.Location: Europe.Methods: We aggregated data from a literature review, online questionnaires and 32 datasets of primary forests. We used boosted regression trees to explore which bio-physical, socio- economic and forest- related variables explain the current distribution of primary forests. Finally, we predicted and mapped the relative likelihood of pri-mary forest occurrence at a 1- km resolution across Europe.Results: Data on primary forests were frequently incomplete or inconsistent among countries. Known primary forests covered 1.4 Mha in 32 countries (0.7% of Europe’s forest area). Most of these forests were protected (89%), but only 46% of them strictly. Primary forests mostly occurred in mountain and boreal areas and were un-evenly distributed across countries, biogeographical regions and forest types. Unmapped primary forests likely occur in the least accessible and populated areas, where forests cover a greater share of land, but wood demand historically has been low.Main conclusions: Despite their outstanding conservation value, primary forests are rare and their current distribution is the result of centuries of land use and forest management. The conservation outlook for primary forests is uncertain as many are not strictly protected and most are small and fragmented, making them prone to ex- tinction debt and human disturbance. Predicting where unmapped primary forests likely occur could guide conservation efforts, especially in Eastern Europe where large areas of primary forest still exist but are being lost at an alarming pace.
- Published
- 2018