Authors: Tinya, Flóra; Čížek, Lukás ;Doerfler, Inken ;Heilmann-Clausen, Jacob Heilmann-Clausen;Hédl, Radim;de Groot, Maarten ;López, Rosana ;Ódor, Péter ;Mårell, Anders ;Nordén, Björn ;

Exploring the impact of management on forest biodiversity is a crucial step towards developing sustainable management methods. Experimental approaches help to directly compare the effects of different forest manipulations including innovative strategies. In this project we mapped multi-taxon experiments in European forests, to build a network with the potential to upscale from local results to the continental level.
We collected information on 28 experiments in 14 European countries covering a range of Mediterranean, temperate and boreal forest types. Beech and oak dominated forests were overrepresented among the experiments, while boreal, hemiboreal and broadleaved evergreen forests were underrepresented. Most treatments involved tree cutting (thinning, gap-cutting, and clear-cutting) and/or microhabitat enrichment (deadwood and habitat tree creation). Other treatments were: game-exclosure, forest floor manipulation, prescribed burning, and water manipulation. Altogether 29 organism groups were studied in the network, with woody regeneration, vascular herbs, fungi, beetles, bryophytes, birds, and lichens being most commonly included, in descending frequency order.
This allowed us an in-depth study exploring the influence of thinning and gap-cutting intensity on forest biodiversity.
This presentation was supported by the BOTTOMS-UP COST Action CA18207 and TAČR Kappa ROTATE project no. TO01000132. FT was funded by the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund PD134302.