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To what extent does surrounding landscape explain stand-level occurrence of conservation-relevant species in fragmented boreal and hemi-boreal forest? – a systematic review

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Nov 18, 2025
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Bar graph showing the distribution across countries of the 172 included studies, and how many of those could be included in the meta-analyses

This systematic review provides a comprehensiv summary of empirical studies analysing the role of landscape fragmentation on the occurrence of conservation relevant species in forest stands. It reviews 172 individual studies of which 43 was subject to a quantitatve meta-analysis. Although the results highlight significant heterogeneity in landscape effects it generally confirms the impact of fragmentation on both species presence and abundance 

Forestry and land-use change are leading causes of habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation worldwide. The boreal forest biome is no exception, and only a small proportion of this forest type remains intact. Since forestry will remain a major land-use in this region, measures must be taken to ensure forest dependent biodiversity. Stand level features and structures promoting conservation relevant species have received much attention, but the landscape level perspective is often missing. Hence, we review the literature that has related fragmentation in the surrounding landscape to occurrence of threatened, declining, red-listed, rare, or deadwood dependent species as well as those considered to be indicator, flagship, umbrella, and/or keystone species in a given boreal forest stand.

A comprehensive search string was developed, benchmarked, and adapted for four bibliographic databases, two search engines, and 37 specialist websites. The online evidence synthesis tool Cadima was used for screening of both abstracts and full texts. All articles meeting the inclusion criteria were subject to study validity assessment and included in a narrative table. Studies reporting means and variance were included in quantitative meta-analysis when more than 3 comparable studies were available.

The searches resulted in 20 890 unique articles that were reduced to 172 studies from 153 articles. These studies related stand level presence, abundance, species richness, and/or composition of conservation relevant species to landscape factors such as: categorical fragmentation intensity (higher vs. lower), amount of habitat or non-habitat, distance to habitat, and/or habitat configuration, on scales ranging from tens to tens of thousands of ha. Forty-three studies were suitable for meta-analysis. These showed a significant negative effect of fragmentation on both presence and abundance of conservation relevant species, as well as a near significant trend for species richness. This was particularly clear when fragmentation was measured as distance to surrounding habitat for presence,

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Source/Author(s)
  • Malin Undin
  • Anita Atrena
  • Fredrik Carlsson
  • Mattias Edman
  • Bengt Gunnar Jonsson
  • Show 1 more
Topic
  • Integrative Forest Management
  • Monitoring & Projecting
Stakeholders
  • Landowners & Practitioners
  • Policy Actors
Purpose
  • Connectivity and landscape diversity
  • Specific habitats (deadwood, microhabitats, habitat types,...)
  • Specific species (other than trees)
Biogeographic region
  • Boreal
Resource public date
  • 2024