This article was very different from our other read articles. The viewpoint of it was more commercial forestry than ecology or biodiversity of which we have often been used to. And as we found out this article was part of Biodiversity and Monitoring program in Finland (MOSSE) it was interesting to see what else is there.

General observation was that biodiversity and ecology aspects were quite well forgotten even though we thought that this article would contain them. We were surprised as well that the content seemed to ignore the enormous literature, research work and case studies of different spatial analysis tools and techniques and their use. The article was written in very detailed way so that many of us thought it was too long. The obverse is that for example the materials, which are the same that are used in many similar studies, were explained so that everyone know now where they came from. Even the article was long it left a questions unanswered in cases such How did they really count the habitat index, why don’t they discuss the ratio between patch quality and size, what really is the budget etc.. The variables comes from commercial forestry and in this article it’s very poorly or not at all described that they have an impact on quality as well, not only to productivity.

Main message of the paper seemed to be that there’s no need to conserve the “best” places (for example with richest biodiversity) because if we choose less good they will eventually become better and in the end the result will be the same. The writers don’t mention anything about where the species which are now living in the best places would stay waiting for time to do its magic in these less good areas.

The second message is that according to their modeling there’s not enough good quality forests left in the survey area and therefore the target boundary could be set lower to
1. be able to achieve target (for example to conserve 10% of the area)
2. save money because bigger areas could be chosen and the bigger the area is the cheaper the conservation is per unit in this case.

For us – people working with mainly in “conservation science” world – the article was an awakening experience about other perspectives in conservation, preservation and the value of biodiversity among other policymakers and scientists.

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Journal Club 11.6.2010.

Cost-effective forest conservation and criteria for potential conservation targets: a Finnish case study: Juutinen, A., Lugue, S., Mönkkönen, M., Vainikainen, N., Tomppo, E.

Environmental Science & Policy
Volume 11, Issue 7, November 2008, Pages 613-626

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VP6-4SWG0NT-1&_user=949111&_coverDate=11%2F30%2F2008&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1370206143&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000049116&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=949111&md5=b418672bbd4ba14c146c118d2fb1a2da