The use of specialist species and indicator species for delineation of key natural areas in spruce-fir forests of the Far East
Vyacheslav A. SPIRIN1, Nadezhda S. LIKSAKOVA2 & Igor V. GLUSHKOV3
1 Botanical Museum of the University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
2 Komarov Botanical Institute RAS, Saint-Petersburg, Russia
3 Non-commercial partnership "Transparent World", Moscow, Russia
The delineation of key natural areas using specialist species and indicator species
is well developed and widely used in Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and
northwest Russia (Anderson et al. 2009) Key natural areas contain features not
replicable in managed forest, and also contain rare forest communities or habitats.
Such forests are inhabited by specialist species – species not adapted for
survival in heavily disturbed forests, such as those experiencing industrial timber
harvesting. The value of a forest tract for biodiversity conservation is also
demonstrated by the presence of a complex of indicator species – species with
relatively strict requirements toforest habitat conditions, but demonstrating somewhat
greater ability to reproduce in forests disturbed by timber harvesting. In 2011
and 2012 we began work on the adaptation of this method to spruce-fir forests of
the Far East. A number of large forest massifs in central Khabarovsky Krai were
studied with the goal of developing a list of specialist and indicator species for that
territory. The following main results were obtained: a preliminary list of specialist
(23 species) and indicator species (40) of wood-destroying fungi was developed
for the main spruce-fir forest types in a range of landscape positions. Some of
these species were detected in Khabarovsky Krai for the first time, and on several
occasions for the first time in the Russia. A number of these species were included
in the “rare” category. The list of rare species comprises 13 species, although not
one of them is included in the Red Books of the Russian Federation or Khabarovsky
Krai. For other groups (vascular plants and lichens) a list of rare and protected
species 12 species vascular plants and 14 lichen species) was established. Work
on the development of the lists of specialist and indicators species continues. In
the course of this research we delineated and described massifs of spruce-fir
forests that, in our opinion, have heightened value for biodiversity conservation.
The quantity of specialist and indicator species was compared between massifs.
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© 2012 Organizing Committee
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