To thin or not to thin: bio-economic analysis of two alternative practices to increase amount of coarse woody debris in managed forests

Abstract

Maintenance of biodiversity in commercial forests has become a main goal in forestry, and several new management principles to reach that goal have been introduced lately. For example, in even-aged forestry, tree retention (leaving a proportion of trees standing in clear-cut sites) is widely used to increase the structural diversity and the amount of dead wood in forests. However, the cost-efficiency of the new management principles is poorly studied. To increase the amount of dead wood, an alternative way could be a change in the thinning regime, so that the self-thinning builds up of woody debris of a growing stand. We used long-term (200 years) simulations to compare ecological and economical effects of the two alternative management practices to increase the amount of dead wood in forest stands: (1) green tree retention and (2) growing stands unthinned. We simulated stand growth and management of 12 pine and 12 spruce stands that represented sites in different parts of Finland. We found that growing stands unthinned produced about 5–6 times more dead wood than retention with 20 trees left per hectare. In terms of economical loss, leaving stands unthinned reduced the net present value of harvest revenues less than 20%. Consequently, leaving stands unthinned offers a cost-effective option to increase the amount of dead wood in commercial forests. The effects of unthinned management were, however, dependent on thermal sum and initial stand density, indicating that biodiversity-oriented management practices should be designed for local conditions.