Towards biodiversity assessment for boreal forests in the Pechora River Basin (Russian Federation)

A method for biodiversity assessment and natural resources management in the Pechora River Basin is developed, to evaluate the sustainability of land-use. Data were collected on the abiotic and the biotic system, and models are being developed on forest production, regeneration and changes in biodiversity. Species diversity differs per taxon, but also alpha and beta diversity differs, and management has large impact on the species diversity. We show that high species diversity is often associated with harvesting, due to invasion of plant and bird species in open vegetation. In other ecosystems we observe a high species diversity for disturbed areas (e.g. gardens, with ruderal species and neophytes), and low diversity for species-poor ecosystems such as peatlands or even some pristine forests. Species diversity was found to be a poor approximation of biodiversity in the sense of ecosystem value, since different succession stages and disturbance regimes result sometimes in high species numbers, compared to undisturbed ecosystems. We propose therefore a different approach, based on a number of indicators at both landscape (ecosystem) and stand level. At landscape or ecosystem level we propose ecosystem rarity, landscape pattern, naturalness, and representativeness as indicators. At stand level we propose species diversity, species rarity and dead wood.