Biodiversity Evaluation Tools for European Forests

Hardback  240pp, illus  ISBN 8716164342      £42.00

The Biodiversity Evaluation Tools BETs for European forest presented in this report are the outcome of a pan-European project BEAR, bringing together expertise from 27 European research organisations. The main achievements are a common scheme of key factors of biodiversity applicable to European forests, European-level Forest Types for Biodiversity Assessment and a list of potential biodiversity indicators to assess forest biodiversity. Furthermore the report gives general advice for European and national level assessment and monitoriing of forest biodiversity.

The BETs for European forest will, hopefully, help to develop both the policy framework for conserving European forests as well as the operational level management.

Contents

Executive summary
The biodiversity challenge
Biodiversity and its components
Policy development as regards the management of forest biodiversity
Biodiversity assessment and evaluation
The EU project "Indicators for monitoring and evaluation of forest biodiversity in Europe - BEAR"
Biodiversity in European forests
Historical development of forest land
The state of biodiversity in European forests
Identifying main features of European forest biodiversity
Key factors of forest biodiversity
The concept of forest types for biodiversity assessments
Major European forest types for biodiversity assesment
Principles for assessing forest biodiversity in Europe
Biodiversity indicators and assessment
Assessing key factors of forest biodiversity
Conclusions
A strategy for assessment of forest biodiversity on European scale
Assessment of forest biodiversity on the operational scale
The need for further development and research
References
Appendices
Appendix 1. BEAR partners and user-panel
Appendix 2. Important European forest types according to the habitats directive
Appendix 3. CORINE land cover types of relevance to forest biodiversity
Appendix 4. The scheme of potential natural vegetation of Europe
Appendix 5. European forest type schemes
Appendix 6. A bibliography of terms and definitions
Appendix 7. Indicators of biodiversity: recent approaches and some general suggestions
Appendix 8. Electronic conference on research and biodiversity: preliminary report on the session on forest