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Spatial modelling was based on data of several systematic field surveys. We
used 23 eco-geographical variables to derive predictors for species habitat suit-
ability, and modelled five taxa as surrogates for the total biodiversity in Dadia
NP, namely grasses and shrubs (combined later to “higher plants”), amphibians,
small forest birds (mainly Passerines) and raptors. For the three groups of fauna
we created species distribution maps, while regarding plant species we used the
accumulated number of plant species as a proxy of biodiversity. For the raptor data
set (Poirazidis et al., 2006) we pooled data from 5 years and plotted the centre
of their yearly territories. All the data were converted to a raster grain of 50
×
50 m, and Environmental Niche Factor Analysis (ENFA) was performed within the
BIOMAPPER software (version 3.2; Hirzel, Hausser, Chessel, & Perrin, 2002). The
total timber standing volume per sub-section was estimated using the official forest
service inventory for the current forest management plan 2006-2016. The relative
thematic maps were classified into four bins, (1) unsuitable, (2) marginal, (3) suit-
able and (4) optimal regarding habitat suitability, and (1) minimum, (2) medium,
(3) large and (4) maximum regarding timber stand volume. We considered four
different forest-management actions at the stand level: management (1) without lim-
itations, (2) with temporal restrictions, (3) with temporal and spatial restrictions and
(4) focused on the ecological values. Three general management scenarios were
formulated: Conservation, timber production and trade off. A major output was
the map of the proposed forest-management categories of the trade-off scenario
(Fig. 13.4).
13.9 Conclusions and Implications for Biodiversity Management
Landscape approaches involving GIS and integrated statistical approaches proved
to be useful to understand the relations of pattern and changes of landscape struc-
ture with the present biodiversity and the habitat suitability for different groups
of organisms. This knowledge was essential to establish conservation strategies
for biodiversity, for instance regarding the maintenance of habitat heterogeneity
in both the core and buffer zone of the reserve (Grill & Cleary, 2003; Kati et al.,
2004b; Kati and Sekercioglu, 2006), and for the optimisation of other ecosys-
tem services such as timber production. Habitat suitability modelling for selected
groups of organisms to develop management scenarios for managed forests is highly
recommendable.
Landscape surveillance should be integrated into the ecological monitoring of
key and indicator species to aid the evaluation of the management effects on both
forest and wildlife. Further research regarding species, taxa and landscape indicators
on a larger scale would be desirable to further extrapolate and validate the mod-
els, and enable an even more complete strategy for biodiversity conservation and
management.
Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to the colleagues and volunteers from WWF
Greece/Dadia project who collaborated in the case studies described herein. We thank Christa
Renetzeder for her helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript.
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