Authors: Doerfler, Inken; Oettel, Janine;Haeler, Elena;Lapin, Katharina;Paillet, Yoan;Burrascano, Sabina;Vandekerkhove, Kris;Ciach, Michał;Campanaro, Alessandro;Campagnaro, Thomas;

The enhancement and conservation of forest biodiversity requires sustainable strategies for the preservation and management of specific species’ habitats. The restoration or maintenance of forest habitats is also required by international and national agreements and regulations. These include several structural indicators which are used as proxies of biodiversity or management sustainability. However, these indicators were never directly tested with multi-taxon forest biodiversity across wide extents. Here we aim at designing sustainable management indicators for maintaining and enhancing habitat biodiversity. For this we use a threshold approach to identify tipping points where the management indicators have a distinctly higher effect on multiple taxa or single taxon biodiversity. This is enabled by the launch of a novel database implemented by the COST Action Bottoms-up that includes multi-taxon biodiversity, structure and management information from more than 3,000 plots across Europe. We hypothesize that common management indicators that relate to a wide range of niches and link to various species may show distinct thresholds for promoting biodiversity while, at the same time, we have an array of different points for specific taxonomic groups or indicator species. This approach should allow for specific management recommendations towards overall biodiversity and particular groups or single taxa.