Natural value assessments – can they predict the species richness of red listed and bioindicator fungi in Fennoscandian coniferous forests?

Sammanfattning: The thesis aims to examine how well two standardised methods in nature conservation, namely natural value assessment and key biotope inventory, perform in terms of recognising an area with a high amount of red listed and bioindicator fungi. The two methods are compared to see if any method is superior to find areas with high presence of red listed and bioindicator fungi and if a larger area automatically means a larger number of species. A natural value assessment inventory is conducted on study sites with a performed key biotope inventory, with an addition of an inventory on fungi. Statistical tests are completed to give information about occurring correlations. The results display that the key biotope inventory and the natural value assessment do not differ in their evaluations of an area. Analysis also shows that there is no relationship between the forest sites area and the assessment performed by the natural value assessment. However, if the assessment is performed by the key biotope inventory there exist a relationship with the forest sites area. Further on, there is no correlation between the area and its number of species. The tests also indicate that neither of the methods predict presence or the number of red listed and bioindicator species in a forest. Based on the results, the presence of bioindicator and red listed species alone are not good indicators of forest nature value. In order to give more credible answers to these questions, more studies with increased number of replicates should be conducted.