How Sensitive Are Ecosystem Services in European Forest Landscapes to Silvicultural Treatment?

Peter Biber,Andrius Stanislovaitis,Marco Marchetti,Maarten Nieuwenhuis,Yvonne Brodrechtová,Susana Barreiro,Susete Marques,Davide Pettenella,Ola Sallnäs,Christophe Orazio,Matteo Favero,Matteo Vizzarri,Gintautas Mozgeris,Emil Galev,Ján Tuček,Ralf Moshammer,Edwin Corrigan,Ida Wallin,Rudolf Navrátil,Renats Trubins,Vilis Brukas,Róbert Smreček,Brigite Botequim,Hans Pretzsch,Margarida Tomé,Ivan Paligorov,Marius Kavaliauskas,Rebeca Cordero-Debets,Gherardo Chirici,Róbert Sedmák,G.m Hengeveld ,Ljusk Ola Eriksson ,Jordi García-Gonzalo ,José G Borges

doi:10.3390/f6051666

Abstract

While sustainable forestry in Europe is characterized by the provision of a multitude of forest ecosystem services, there exists no comprehensive study that scrutinizes their sensitivity to forest management on a pan-European scale, so far. We compile scenario runs from regionally tailored forest growth models and Decision Support Systems (DSS) from 20 case studies throughout Europe and analyze whether the ecosystem service provision depends on management intensity and other co-variables, comprising regional affiliation, social environment, and tree species composition. The simulation runs provide information about the case-specifically most important ecosystem services in terms of appropriate indicators. We found a strong positive correlation between management intensity and wood production, but only weak correlation with protective and socioeconomic forest functions. Interestingly, depending on the forest region, we found that biodiversity can react in both ways, positively and negatively, to increased management intensity. Thus, it may be in tradeoff or in synergy with wood production and forest resource maintenance. The covariables species composition and social environment are of punctual interest only, while the affiliation to a certain region often makes an important difference in terms of an ecosystem service’s treatment sensitivity.

Highlights

For a long time, the general consensus in Europe was that forest ecosystem services beyond wood production would be sufficiently provided as mere side effects of the latter, a concept that was well outlined by the term wake theory [1]
At the European level, ecosystem service steering potential by forest management seems to be highest for wood production, forest resources, and biodiversity
Non-wood production, by contrast, where regional differences are high and our information base is smallest, seems to be very elastic when related to management intensity, at least as seen from a pan-European perspective

Summary

Introduction

The general consensus in Europe was that forest ecosystem services beyond wood production would be sufficiently provided as mere side effects of the latter, a concept that was well outlined by the term wake theory [1]. They have emancipated, and their relative importance is subject to partly heated societal debates from the local to the pan-European scale. Important questions are how far ecosystem service provision is sensitive to forest management, and to what extent different ecosystem services are conflicting or compatible. Existing studies were limited to single ecosystem services only and did not follow a regionally tailored bottom-up approach (cf [7,8]). This is remarkable, as most of Europe’s forests are covered by management-oriented forest growth simulation models—partly even embedded in decision support systems (DSS)—that enable such a scrutiny

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Conclusion