Surveying biodiversity in protected and managed areas: Algae, macrophytes and macroinvertebrates in boreal forest streams Jani Heino a,b, *, Jari Ilmonen b , Juho Kotanen c , Heikki Mykra ¨ a , Lauri Paasivirta d , Janne Soininen e , Risto Virtanen f a Finnish Environment Institute, P.O. Box 413, University of Oulu, FI-90014 Oulu, Finland b Department of Biology, P.O. Box 3000, University of Oulu, FI-90014 Oulu, Finland c South Savo Regional Environment Centre, Ja ¨a ¨ka ¨rinkatu 14, FI-50100 Mikkeli, Finland d Ruuhikoskenkatu 17, FI-24240 Salo, Finland e Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, P.O. Box 65, University of Helsinki, FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland f Department of Biology, Botanical Museum, P.O. Box 3000, University of Oulu, FI-90014 Oulu, Finland 1. Introduction Biodiversity is declining seriously globally, underscoring the importance of conservation planning. Although increasing effort and money are being spent on protected areas, the resources available for conservation are insufficient to attain goals of protecting most of biodiversity (James et al., 1999; Gaston et al., 2008). Another potential reason to this problem with conservation planning is that protected areas are often delineated on the basis of a limited proportion of biodiversity (e.g. terrestrial vertebrates and vascular plants) or acquired based on socioeconomic grounds (e.g. easily available and acquirable least-impacted remnant areas). Such limited information in area selection does not provide a necessary basis for the preservation of wholesale biodiversity (Rodrigues et al., 2004; Abella ´n et al., 2007). Furthermore, extensive surveys of biodiversity in protected and managed areas have not been conducted for a majority of taxonomic groups and ecosystem types (Stohlgren et al., 1995; Gaston et al., 2008), which makes it difficult to assess how large a portion of biodiversity is at Ecological Indicators 9 (2009) 1179–1187 ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 2 December 2008 Received in revised form 30 January 2009 Accepted 9 February 2009 Keywords: Biodiversity surveys Community composition Congruence Forestry Koutajoki drainage basin Species richness ABSTRACT Extensive surveys of biodiversity in protected and managed areas have not been conducted for a majority of taxonomic groups and ecosystem types, which makes it difficult to assess how large a portion of biodiversity is at least potentially under protection. The situation is the same in boreal regions, and only preliminary analyses of the biodiversity patterns of less well-known organism groups, including many freshwater taxa, within the protected area network have been conducted. We studied patterns of species richness and community composition of algae, macrophytes (bryophytes and vascular plants), and macroinvertebrates of headwater streams draining protected areas and managed forests in a boreal drainage basin in Finland. We found no significant differences in the species richness and community composition of these organism groups between the protected and managed streams. Gamma- and beta- diversity varied strongly among the protected and managed stream groups, yet this variation was contingent on the organism group and the beta-diversity measure used. In general, there was much species turnover within both protected and managed stream groups, masking any between-group differences. However, we found a number of redlisted and rare species in our surveys. Of these species, several macrophyte species occurred more frequently in the protected streams. By contrast, rare species of algae and macrophytes did not generally show such inclinations to the protected streams. We found no strong congruence in species richness or community dissimilarity between algae, macrophytes, and macroinvertebrates, suggesting that the main anthropogenic gradient in terms of forestry is not strong enough to modify stream environmental conditions and thereby shape biodiversity in the focal drainage basin. This finding also suggests that surveys of aquatic biodiversity across protected and managed landscapes should not rely too heavily on the surrogate taxon approach, but instead should consider patterns shown by multiple taxonomic groups that represent biologically and ecologically disparate organisms. Our results indeed suggest that the levels of alpha-, beta-, and gamma-diversity show differing among-taxon responses to forest management and naturalness of headwater streams. ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author at: Finnish Environment Institute, P.O. Box 413, University of Oulu, FI-90014 Oulu, Finland. Tel.: +358 400148653; fax: +358 204902985. E-mail address: jani.heino@ymparisto.fi (J. Heino). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecological Indicators journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolind 1470-160X/$ – see front matter ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2009.02.003