Abstract
There is worldwide interest in managing forests to improve biodiversity, enhance ecosystem services and assure long-term sustainability of forest resources. An increasingly important goal of forest management is to increase stand diversity and improve wildlife and aquatic habitat. Well-planned silvicultural systems containing a mixture of broadleaf-conifer species have potential to enhance stand diversity and provide other ecosystem services earlier than typical even-aged conifer plantations. Here, we use the example of mixed Sitka spruce/western hemlock and red alder in young, managed stands in southeast Alaska to achieve these goals. We briefly describe the silvics of Sitka spruce, western hemlock and red alder plantations as pure conifer stands or pure broadleaf stands. Then, we synthesize studies of mixed red alder-Sitka spruce/western hemlock stands in southeast Alaska and present their potential for improving stand structural complexity, biodiversity and other ecosystem services over pure conifer forests. Finally, we discuss some of the opportunities and potential tradeoffs for managing mixed broadleaf-conifer stands for providing a number of natural resources and the influence of these broadleaf-conifer forests on ecosystem linkages and processes.
Highlights
Ecosystem services include a broad suite of social and ecological benefits provided by forest ecosystems including values that are often overlooked in traditional forest management decisions.Ecosystem services has emerged as a way of framing and describing the comprehensive set of benefits that people receive from nature [1,2,3]
Mixed red alder and conifer stands commonly occur throughout the coastal Pacific Northwest and Alaska wherever alder naturally occurs, and red alder is a common associate with western hemlock, Sitka spruce, Douglas-fir and other conifer species
The following section summarizes a set of research studies where composition, growth and stand development were carefully reconstructed for some watersheds in southeast Alaska. These studies provide a basis for stand development in mixed red alder conifer stands and we describe tree height growth, stand structure, understory plant development and aquatic and riparian habitats for mixed red alder-western hemlock/Sitka spruce stands in southeast Alaska
Summary
Ecosystem services include a broad suite of social and ecological benefits provided by forest ecosystems including values that are often overlooked in traditional forest management decisions. There are a number of tradeoffs in single-species stands that are primarily managed for wood production These uniform conifer plantations have simple tree height and diameter distributions and forest structures that often lead to reduced plant diversity and abundance, compromised wildlife and aquatic habitats and lower aesthetic values [7,8,19,20]. We discuss some opportunities for managing mixed broadleaf-conifer stands contrasted with predominantly conifer plantations and the potential benefits of these mixed alder-conifer forests for providing a number of important ecosystem services
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