A preliminary regional division for efficient biodiversity preservation based on disturbance regime, forest history and tree species distribution: the southern Swedish example.

In English We propose a method for dividing large regions into biogeographical sub-regions based mainly on natural disturbance regime, forest history and potential tree species distribution. This subdivision could be used as a guide when designing conservational strategies and management plans for landscapes and protected areas. At present, conservational strategies and management of valuable areas on the one hand and production forests on the other, is often similar over large regions, especially from a species´ point of view. Compared to the scale at which natural disturbances, tree migration and species dispersal/interaction operate, protected areas are usually minute, isolated and found in fragmented landscapes. Therefore they will rarely, if ever, develop the multitude of successional stages found in large natural landscapes under a disturbance regime with large-scale and relatively rare disturbance events (at point scale). Consequently, in southern Sweden, structures and conditions on which many rare species are dependent are rapidly lost, both in earlier fire-prone forests and in landscapes shaped by grazing and wind disturbances. The proposed division method in managed forest landscapes could be an important guide for foresters aiming at restoring biological values
through emulating natural disturbances.