CONSERVATION EFFECTIVENESS AND MONETARY VALUE OF FLOODPLAIN FORESTS HABITATS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

Floodplain forests of the European temperate zone were significantly influenced by human activities in the past. Despite of this fact, these forests ecosystems are important biodiversity refugees in European lowlands. The most valuable remnants of floodplain forests have been established as protected areas. Current climate changes start to cause an increasing frequency and dynamics of flood events in alluvial landscape along lowland European rivers. In this context there is more awareness aimed to the water retention function of floodplain forests. As a consequence, more effort is devoted to the restoration of floodplain forests ecosystem services. On the other hand, European floodplain forests are threatened by the international water management and transport projects. Thus this situation promoted both effort in establishment of new protected areas for maintaining biodiversity of floodplain forests and finding methods of monetary estimation of floodplain forest biodiversity under concept of payments for ecosystem services. The main aims of this paper are (1) assessment of effectiveness of protected areas focused on conservation of floodplain forests (both on national and European level) and (2) assessment of monetary value of floodplain forests habitats. Assessment of conservation effectiveness of protected areas is based on calculation NCEI index by using GIS tools. We applied the NCEI index (Nature Conservation Effectiveness Index) to measure the effectiveness of forest habitat conservation. The NCEI is calculated for specific habitat types as the total area of a particular forest habitat type in all SACs in the Czech Republic divided by the total area of that same natural habitat in the entire Czech Republic. The NCEI index ranges from 0 (absence of protection) to 1 (totally effective protection). Monetary valuation of forest habitats using original Czech methods is based on field mapping of natural habitats under Natura 2000 European network. The method is based on a combination of environmental benefits and costs for the revitalization of the relevant habitat types. It is a method of expert arrangement of habitats according to their point values depending on their abilities as an environment for plant and animal species. This method also expresses the value of a point in monetary units according to the size of the average national cost necessary to achieve the increment of one point of nature and landscape quality, and it is based on interdisciplinary expert assessments of all types of habitats that occur in a particular area. There are eight types of floodplain forest habitats in the Czech Republic, which are assessed in this paper (Tab. 1). Czech national system of protected areas covers very poor floodplain forest habitats (Tab. 1) and thus its conservation effectiveness is low in this case. Results presented in Tab. 2 indicate higher effectiveness of Natura 2000 network (European level of protected areas) than national system of protected areas. Monetary value of natural habitats of floodplain forests (Tab. 3) seriously supports the awareness of the protected areas importance for maintaining of floodplain forest biodiversity in the frame of conservation targets of Natura 2000 network. Presented results indicate that joining of the conservation effectiveness assessment with monetary valuation of the natural forest habitats can be a promising support decision tool for conservation forest biodiversity.