Relationship between forest management planning units and spatial distribution of forest habitat components in Koli National Park.

This study examined the relationships between forest management planning units and patches formed by forest habitat components. The test area used was a part of Koli National Park in North Karelia, eastern Finland. Forest management planning units (i.e. forest compartments) were defined by using a t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Silva Fennica
Main Authors: Uuttera, Janne, Hyppänen, Harri
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Finnish Society of Forest Science 1997
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.a8539
https://doaj.org/article/9808e23b10ff42d08bcb89e3de3bf3e0
Description
Summary:This study examined the relationships between forest management planning units and patches formed by forest habitat components. The test area used was a part of Koli National Park in North Karelia, eastern Finland. Forest management planning units (i.e. forest compartments) were defined by using a traditional method of Finnish forestry which applies aerial photographs and compartment-wise field inventory. Patches of forest habitat components were divided according to subjective rules by using a chosen set of variables depicting the edaphic features and vegetation of a forest habitat. The spatial distribution of the habitat components was estimated with the kriging-interpolation based on systematically located sample plots. The comparisons of the two patch mosaics were made by using the standard tools of GIS. The results of the study show that forest compartment division does not correlate very strongly with the forest habitat pattern. On average, the mean patch size of the forest habitat components is greater and the number of these patches lower compared to forest compartment division. However, if the forest habitat component distribution had been considered, the number of the forest compartments would have at least doubled after intersection.