Towards an effective in-situ biodiversity assessment in European forests

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F26733544%3A_____%2F25%3AN0000002" target="_blank" >RIV/26733544:_____/25:N0000002 - isvavai.cz</a>

Alternative codes found

RIV/86652079:_____/25:00619489 RIV/60460709:41320/25:102531

Result on the web

<a href="http://ciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1439179125000246" target="_blank" >http://ciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1439179125000246</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2025.03.003" target="_blank" >10.1016/j.baae.2025.03.003</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Towards an effective in-situ biodiversity assessment in European forests

Original language description

Assessing multi-taxon biodiversity is crucial to understand forests’ response to environmental changes and to inform management strategies. In Europe, forest biodiversity monitoring is still scattered and heterogeneous, although a long-term monitoring network has long been advocated. Given the monitoring aims reported in various EU policies, this network should be accurately designed also through the estimation of its sampling effort, here intended as the number of sampling plots and sites. We used a novel database of forest multi-taxon biodiversity for a pilot study to: estimate the minimum sampling effort needed to: assess variation in species richness and composition; compare these estimates with the efforts invested in the pilot database; discuss estimates’ differences across taxonomic groups and forest categories. We focused on six taxonomic groups (vascular plants, birds, epiphytic lichens and bryophytes, wood-inhabiting fungi and saproxylic beetles) across six forest categories. Based on 6,165 plots at 2,084 different locations across Europe, we benchmarked the effort to achieve: a complete species richness estimate through interpolation/extrapolation curves, and a precise evaluation of species composition variation through multivariate standard error. Our estimates differed widely, especially among taxonomic groups. For species richness, estimates range from 3 to 147 plots per site across 3 to 29 sites per forest category, with birds and epiphytic bryophytes requiring the least effort. For species composition, estimates range from 5 to over 25 plots per site across 5 to 20 sites per forest category, with saproxylic beetles, vascular plants, and fungi displaying the highest estimates. The taxonomic groups requiring an effort comparable to existing data were the least diverse, all the others need greater efforts, either for species richness (e.g., saproxylic beetles), or species composition (e.g., vascular plants), or both (e.g., wood-inhabiting fungi). An effective monitoring network of European forests’ biodiversity should thoroughly account for these benchmarks and for their taxon-dependency.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_SC - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the SCOPUS database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

10511 - Environmental sciences (social aspects to be 5.7)

Project

Result was created during the realization of more than one project. More information in the Projects tab.

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2025

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Basic and Applied Ecology

ISSN

1439-1791

e-ISSN

1618-0089

Volume of the periodical

84

Issue of the periodical within the volume

5.3.2025

Country of publishing house

DE - GERMANY

Number of pages

12

Pages from-to

121-132

UT code for WoS article

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EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-105000377838