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What Data to Use for Forest Conservation Planning? A Comparison of Coarse Open and Detailed Proprietary Forest Inventory Data in Finland

The boreal region is facing intensifying resource extraction pressure, but the lack of comprehensive biodiversity data makes operative forest conservation planning difficult. Many countries have implemented forest inventory schemes and are making extensive and up-to-date forest databases increasingl...

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Autores principales: Lehtomäki, Joona, Tuominen, Sakari, Toivonen, Tuuli, Leinonen, Antti
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4552654/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26317227
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135926
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author Lehtomäki, Joona
Tuominen, Sakari
Toivonen, Tuuli
Leinonen, Antti
author_facet Lehtomäki, Joona
Tuominen, Sakari
Toivonen, Tuuli
Leinonen, Antti
author_sort Lehtomäki, Joona
collection PubMed
description The boreal region is facing intensifying resource extraction pressure, but the lack of comprehensive biodiversity data makes operative forest conservation planning difficult. Many countries have implemented forest inventory schemes and are making extensive and up-to-date forest databases increasingly available. Some of the more detailed inventory databases, however, remain proprietary and unavailable for conservation planning. Here, we investigate how well different open and proprietary forest inventory data sets suit the purpose of conservation prioritization in Finland. We also explore how much priorities are affected by using the less accurate but open data. First, we construct a set of indices for forest conservation value based on quantitative information commonly found in forest inventories. These include the maturity of the trees, tree species composition, and site fertility. Secondly, using these data and accounting for connectivity between forest types, we investigate the patterns in conservation priority. For prioritization, we use Zonation, a method and software for spatial conservation prioritization. We then validate the prioritizations by comparing them to known areas of high conservation value. We show that the overall priority patterns are relatively consistent across different data sources and analysis options. However, the coarse data cannot be used to accurately identify the high-priority areas as it misses much of the fine-scale variation in forest structures. We conclude that, while inventory data collected for forestry purposes may be useful for forest conservation purposes, it needs to be detailed enough to be able to account for more fine-scaled features of high conservation value. These results underline the importance of making detailed inventory data publicly available. Finally, we discuss how the prioritization methodology we used could be integrated into operative forest management, especially in countries in the boreal zone.
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spelling pubmed-45526542015-09-10 What Data to Use for Forest Conservation Planning? A Comparison of Coarse Open and Detailed Proprietary Forest Inventory Data in Finland Lehtomäki, Joona Tuominen, Sakari Toivonen, Tuuli Leinonen, Antti PLoS One Research Article The boreal region is facing intensifying resource extraction pressure, but the lack of comprehensive biodiversity data makes operative forest conservation planning difficult. Many countries have implemented forest inventory schemes and are making extensive and up-to-date forest databases increasingly available. Some of the more detailed inventory databases, however, remain proprietary and unavailable for conservation planning. Here, we investigate how well different open and proprietary forest inventory data sets suit the purpose of conservation prioritization in Finland. We also explore how much priorities are affected by using the less accurate but open data. First, we construct a set of indices for forest conservation value based on quantitative information commonly found in forest inventories. These include the maturity of the trees, tree species composition, and site fertility. Secondly, using these data and accounting for connectivity between forest types, we investigate the patterns in conservation priority. For prioritization, we use Zonation, a method and software for spatial conservation prioritization. We then validate the prioritizations by comparing them to known areas of high conservation value. We show that the overall priority patterns are relatively consistent across different data sources and analysis options. However, the coarse data cannot be used to accurately identify the high-priority areas as it misses much of the fine-scale variation in forest structures. We conclude that, while inventory data collected for forestry purposes may be useful for forest conservation purposes, it needs to be detailed enough to be able to account for more fine-scaled features of high conservation value. These results underline the importance of making detailed inventory data publicly available. Finally, we discuss how the prioritization methodology we used could be integrated into operative forest management, especially in countries in the boreal zone. Public Library of Science 2015-08-28 /pmc/articles/PMC4552654/ /pubmed/26317227 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135926 Text en © 2015 Lehtomäki et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Lehtomäki, Joona
Tuominen, Sakari
Toivonen, Tuuli
Leinonen, Antti
What Data to Use for Forest Conservation Planning? A Comparison of Coarse Open and Detailed Proprietary Forest Inventory Data in Finland
title What Data to Use for Forest Conservation Planning? A Comparison of Coarse Open and Detailed Proprietary Forest Inventory Data in Finland
title_full What Data to Use for Forest Conservation Planning? A Comparison of Coarse Open and Detailed Proprietary Forest Inventory Data in Finland
title_fullStr What Data to Use for Forest Conservation Planning? A Comparison of Coarse Open and Detailed Proprietary Forest Inventory Data in Finland
title_full_unstemmed What Data to Use for Forest Conservation Planning? A Comparison of Coarse Open and Detailed Proprietary Forest Inventory Data in Finland
title_short What Data to Use for Forest Conservation Planning? A Comparison of Coarse Open and Detailed Proprietary Forest Inventory Data in Finland
title_sort what data to use for forest conservation planning? a comparison of coarse open and detailed proprietary forest inventory data in finland
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4552654/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26317227
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135926
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