Forecasting habitat suitability for Apennine brown bear under climate change and alternative forest management scenarios

摘要: Forests provide fundamental resources for animal species living in forest ecosystems, and both their availability and quality are influenced by vegetation composition, tridimensional structure, and successional dynamic of the forest over the time. Wildlife resources associated to forest ecosystems are crucial to fulfill their primary biological requirements, including foods and refuge sites for thermoregulating, sheltering, and rearing offspring. Abundance, availability, and accessibility of these resources directly influence the survival of individuals, affecting their fitness at the individual and population levels. Notably, however, quality and abundance of these resources are not fixed over the time, but they vary as a function of ecological succession, land and resource use by humans, and forest adaptations to climate change, both in the short and in the long term.