Fig. 1

Conceptual illustration of the fact that all forest stands are placed in a landscape context likely to influence the occurrence of conservation-relevant species in said stand. For the proposed review, seven landscape-level variables have been identified relating to the primary question “To what extent does surrounding landscape fragmentation explain stand-level occurrence of conservation-relevant species in boreal and hemi-boreal forest?” A. These are: D1 Human fragmentation vs Natural fragmentation; D2 Amount of forest; D3 Amount of old forest; D4 Other matrix composition differences; D5 Distance to forest; D6 Spatial distribution of forest; D7 Intensity/Extent of land use change over time. In addition, six secondary questions have been identified to further break down the primary question. These relate to: Q1 relative effect size of different landscape factors; Q2 the effect of landscape size; Q3 how effects differ between organism groups, Q4 where knowledge gaps remain; Q5 the relative importance of landscape-level factors compared to stand-level factors; Q6 how effects differ between forest types B