Criteria and indicators for the conservation of genetic diversity.

Abstract

Conservation of genetic diversity is usually one aspect of more complex management goals. It is associated with sustainable forest management, which is a concept that is difficult to measure or assess. The use of criteria and indicators, which outline conditions that should be met if forest management is to be deemed sustainable, offers a solution to this problem. The most important characteristic of an effective indicator is the practicality of assessment in a short period. As genes are inherently difficult to detect, this has usually resulted in the adoption of vague or very indirect indicators of genetic diversity. An approach is described which uses the assessment of processes which maintain genetic diversity as surrogate measures of genetic diversity itself. Using this conceptual framework, a number of indicators and verifiers (the variables actually measured) are proposed. Even given such an approach, problems related to the establishment of thresholds and choice of species to assess remain. Possible solutions to these problems are proposed, but empirical testing is required to verify the validity of such an approach.