Abstract
Biodiversity in forests is strongly affected by forest management practices, such as clearcutting and aggregated retention. Therefore, the assessment of the effects of forest management on biodiversity is a major concern in forest ecology. In the present study, we aimed to characterize the effects of forest management practices, after one year, on the abundance, species richness, community composition, and functional groups of moths in forests. The moths were sampled in four different forest stands: three stands (clearcutting, aggregated retention, and no cutting) in a planted Japanese larch forest and one stand in a natural Mongolian oak forest. The results revealed that the moth communities changed in response to the changes in vegetation after the implementation of forest management practices, and clearcutting increased the abundance and species richness of herbivorous and warm-adapted species. The structure and function of moth communities were affected by the forest management practices such as clearcutting and aggregated retention, which were reflected by a decrease in community indices and change in moth community composition with changes in vegetation.
Highlights
Forest management practices abruptly change the environmental condition of forests, affecting their ecological structures, including biodiversity
Three community indices were higher in the no cutting areas than in the forest management practice areas, and they presented the highest value in July (Table 2)
Among the four treatment stands, the oak forest (OA) stand exhibited the highest species richness and abundance with 201 species and 1444 individuals, respectively, followed by the NC stand with 108 species and
Summary
Forest management practices abruptly change the environmental condition of forests, affecting their ecological structures, including biodiversity. Clearcutting as a timber harvest technique is widely used in forest management practice because it is a cheapest and the most efficient [3,4]. Many concerns regarding this technique are related to its detrimental effects on the forest ecosystems [5]. To minimize the negative ecological effects of clearcutting, recently the aggregated retention is widely promoted as a way to conserve forest biodiversity [6]. Clearcutting affects the environmental condition of forests, including an increase in sunlight exposure, and fluctuations in temperature, humidity in the ground layers, soil bulk density, and soil hardness [7,8,9]
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