SCIENCE@home

What is unmanaged forest and how does it sustain biodiversity in landscapes with a long history of intensive forestry?

H. H. Bruun,J. Heilmann‐Clausen

Published 2021 in Journal of Applied Ecology

ABSTRACT

1. A recent paper by Schall et al. (2020) concluded that beech forests managed in even-aged (EA) rotation systems were more efficient than unmanaged (UNM) for est and forest managed in uneven-aged (UEA) selective cutting systems in sup porting landscape-scale biodiversity in Germany. 2. The authors based their conclusion on a comprehensive multitaxon survey and a promising resampling model for assessing gamma diversity at landscape scale. Here, we challenge their conclusions and evaluate the importance of UNM forests for conservation of forest biodiversity. 3. The average amount of deadwood reported from EA stands (27.8 m 3 /ha) was almost 30% higher than reported from UNM stands (21.6 m 3 /ha) in the study. Averages from long UNM temperate forests in Europe are typically six to seven times higher (131–157 m 3 /ha). We therefore conclude the UNM studied stands to reflect legacies of former management, and to be poorly representative of UNM forests. Data from our own studies, including long UNM beech stands in Denmark, demonstrate how this shortcoming seriously undermines the general validity of the presented results to conservation of forest biodiversity. 4. Synthesis and applications . Preservation and restoration of intact forest ecosys tems remains essential to biodiversity conservation. We show that the findings of Schall et al. (2020) do not contradict this important notion. Schall and colleagues identified UEA management systems

PUBLICATION RECORD

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-14 of 14 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

Showing 1-12 of 12 citing papers · Page 1 of 1