Authors: Strengbom, Joachim;

Setting-aside forest of high conservation value is a cornerstone in forest conservation strategies globally. The understanding of factors that determine high conservation value is, however, less well understood. Although it is widely acknowledged that the response to environmental changes varies greatly among species, such differences are rarely reflected in conservation strategies. Thus, we need a better understanding of factors determining conservation values, and how uniform of such factors are among different. Based on results from several studies, I here summarize how diversity of species of conservation concern varies depending on local and landscape factors in boreal and hemi-boreal forests in Sweden. The results show that local, landscape, and regional forest characteristics influence biodiversity in a non-uniform pattern among species groups and forest types. The environmental factors best explaining variation in species richness varies considerable among forest type (mixed forest, mixed coniferous forests, spruce-, and pine dominated forests) and among taxa (vascular plants, macro fungi, lichens and bryophytes), suggesting that there is no single conservation strategy that will preserve biodiversity across all forest types or across taxa. Nevertheless, the single most common measure associated with high species richness across taxa and forest types was amount of mature forest in the landscape.