Διαδικτυακή Πύλη Συνεργασίας Για Τα Δάση

Since the enactment of the EU Habitats Directive, the conservation status of forest habitat types, habitats of species, and species has become the central concept of the Directive's nature conservation legislation. Despite its role, it has drawn relatively little attention. Within a rather short research period, a few research papers have addressed the existing definitions, indicators for the conservation status assessment, and assessment techniques. This paper attempted to complete the set of measurable indicators available in national forest inventories and connect them with the forest habitat types’ conservation status components (area, function, structure, and prospects). A set of 40 indicators was defined, labelled with one or more of the four conservation status components and assessed with the quality dimensions. The analysis uncovered that five indicators could be used to assess the component of range and area, 20 that of structure, 22 that of function and 27 that of prospects. It also showed that conventional forestry indicators such as tree species, diameter at breast height, and regeneration are less sensitive regarding the data quality. Conversely, some typical biodiversity indicators lacked completeness, timeliness, and precision. In addition to this analysis, the data distributions (data for them were provided by the national forest inventories of Italy, Slovenia, and Spain) of some indicators were analysed. Based on all the results, it was also possible to conclude that there is a shortage of national forest inventory indicators for the assessments of the area and function conservation status components. While the area component should be described with the indicators of forest habitat type fragmentation, mingling and perforation with non-forest and other forest vegetation communities, the functional component is bereft of indicators describing processes such as biomass growth and carbon cycling. Future research should thus search for more indicators to represent all conservation status components in a more balanced way. More efforts should also be expended into the harmonisation of indicators.

The need and will to mitigate and adapt to climate change and its threats to biodiversity have risen. Nevertheless, the acting for the conservation of biodiversity remains hampered by knowledge gaps. E.g., for habitat types (in the sense of biotopes) the impact of climate change has been scarcely researched. There are many “species distribution models” (SDMs) that can project species distributions under climate change, but their application to contemporary habitat types poses considerable methodological problems. Here we show the viability of the uncommon method of “climate analogues” to provide data to assess the potential impact of future climate change on habitat types for chosen regions, and the usability of the method compared to SDMs. We assume climate analogues can reflect the potential future habitat data in the study regions when (1) plausibly located future climate analogues are found with relevant climate variables for the studied habitat types, and (2) habitat occurrences relate with their frequency and area to the climate reflected in the climate analogues. We tested the method for three landscapes in Germany using European Natura 2000 habitat data, analyzing five future climate conditions until 2100. Future climate analogues were found southwest of the study regions, primarily in France. They progressed further southwest and from higher to lower elevations with increasing climate change. Ecologically sound habitat types remained stable, increased, and decreased in frequency and area parallel to the magnitude of climate change in the climate analogues. Thus, we regard climate analogues as a viable method to estimate potential climate change induced changes of Natura 2000 habitat types at the regional scale. Nature conservation benefits from climate analogues as they are efficient, data-robust, and promote the implementation of actions, the exchange of conservation experiences, and international collaboration. They are an easy and powerful method to tackle the looming losses of habitat diversity from climate change.

Conservation Plan of Pinus heldreichii is one of plans which is necessary to develop in order to complete Transnational Joint Strategy for the management of priority species in Natura 2000 sites in 3 countries. Good practice developed using modern conservation methods of particular species and habitats of national importance developed in the practice of EU countries will be developed jointly through cross-border cooperation between partners with the aim of piloting conservation activities in 3 countries. The priority of biodiversity conservation is not always only a national and European issue, but in cases where the natural communities are located on the cross-border zones of the two countries are a matter of importance for cross-border cooperation in conservation. All three countries face similar (sometimes the same) problems in biodiversity conservation; the LASPEH project is intended to transfer good practices in biodiversity conservation between partners like pilot action, to strengthen conservation and capacity-building through data sharing and measures. This type of pilot activity will strengthen communication between partner institutions and establish long-term cooperation with the aim of establishing cross-border practices in strategic planning of conservation measures of importance for the three countries.