Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Forest fragmentation is increasing globally and is the process by which continuous forest is divided into smaller and more isolated patches, potentially threatening biodiversity. Riparian zones are the transitional areas between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and are important for preserving biodiversity, protecting water quality, and functioning as connectivity corridors in a fragmented landscape. Fragmentation within the riparian zone may compromise these ecological functions, and it is of importance to be able to identify these remaining valuable areas for conservation and restoration purposes.

This study is a GIS-based analysis focused on assessing forest fragmentation in the Krycklan Catchment Study (KCS) in northern Sweden. The focus was on whether riparian buffers could enhance landscape connectivity, as well as evaluating the quality of the riparian forests. First, connectivity was evaluated within three scenarios. These were: only inside riparian buffer zones of 30 m in the KCS, within the entire landscape of KCS, and within a hypothetical scenario of the same area, but where forest areas were restored within the 30 m-wide riparian zones. It was also evaluated how two different spatial resolutions of the forest maps affected the result. Second, remote sensing-derived metrics were used to develop an ecological index for assessing the quality of riparian forests. The ecological value should resemble several important functions that a riparian zone provides. This was then evaluated against field-based biodiversity data.

The result showed that riparian forests were more fragmented than the surrounding landscape, and restoring riparian buffers did not increase landscape connectivity. Since this analysis was done on a small area, further studies should be done on a larger scale to assess if these patterns are consistent within Sweden. Furthermore, finer resolution data indicated higher fragmentation patterns compared to coarser resolution. Lastly, the remote sensing-derived metrics and the created ecological index for identifying valuable riparian forest showed weak to moderate correlations with field-based data. In line with ongoing restoration and conservation initiatives, further development of such approaches in Sweden is needed to better support these efforts. Overall, the results highlight the importance of being scale-aware when doing fragmentation analyses.