Effective management for deadwood-dwelling lichen diversity requires landscape-scale habitat protection

Habitat loss is considered a major threat for biodiversity. However, the scales on which its effects occur are still insufficiently understood, namely, is the amount of available habitat important for species richness on both local and landscape scales? We studied the effects of local and landscape-scale habitat amount on local-scale species density of deadwood-dependent lichens in Swedish boreal forests. Creation and retention of dead wood are common practices to benefit forest biodiversity, and recognizing the relevant scale is critical for them to be successful.
We surveyed deadwood-dependent lichens in 90 unmanaged forest stands that differed in the local and landscape habitat amount. The local habitat amount was measured as the amount of dead wood in the sampled stands (m2 dead wood/ha), while six alternative proxies were used to estimate the landscape habitat amount, i.e., the amount of dead wood in the landscapes surrounding the sampled forest stands. Lichen species density (num..., , ,