Abstract

A method of estimating the spatial distribution of some natural occurring characteristics important to nature conservation is described and applied to a managed forest in southern Sweden. Forest compartments were stratified by age and three different kinds of variables, namely the amount of Coarse Woody Debris (CWD), the coverage of the Forest Floor Vegetation (FFV) and the Nature Conservation Value (NCV), were measured at 289 geo-referenced circular sample plots. Spherical and exponential functions describing spatial autocorrelation were derived from semivariograms and kriging was used to create contour maps by spatial interpolation. A majority of the investigated variables proved to be spatially autocorrelated. For many variables the semi-variograms showed an evident nugget effect, which either could be explained by random measurement errors or, perhaps more likely, by a component of the spatial process with shorter range than the shortest sampling interval of about 30 - 40 meters. Hence, to fully explain or model Nature Conservation Variables observations at even shorter distances than this would be helpful.

Keywords

forestry; planning; biodiversity

Published in

Arbetsrapport / Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, Institutionen för skoglig resurshushållning
2000,
Publisher: Institutionen för skoglig resurshushållning, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet

UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/125922