Essential Features of Forest Biodiversity for Assessment Purposes

Forest biodiversity assessments may be based on species or taxon groups, structural traits of forest ecosystems and/or biodiversity indicators derived from these variables. Working Group 3 (WG3) of COST Action E43 initially selected 41 candidate biodiversity variables based on current ecological knowledge. The next step entailed construction and distribution of a questionnaire regarding the importance of the candidate variables for assessing forest biodiversity and their feasibility for assessment by national forest inventories (NFI). Responses were received from 22 countries. Analyses of the responses with respect to importance and feasibility resulted in further selection of 17 biodiversity variables that were then grouped into seven essential biodiversity features: forest categories, forest age, forest structure, deadwood, regeneration, ground vegetation and naturalness. These seven essential features constitute the second level of WG3's 4-level reference framework: (1) concept, (2) essential feature, (3) indicator, and (4) NFI variable. This chapter addresses in detail the analyses of the questionnaire responses, selection of the 17 biodiversity variables, and derivation of the seven essential forest biodiversity features.