Authors: Landivar, Carlos; Pereira, Joao;Hendel, Anna-Lena;Dormann, Carsten;

Modern forestry is aiming towards conserving natural elements and improving forest heterogeneity to conserve biodiversity. Forestry can directly affect forest structure through target-oriented decisions or indirectly by the interaction of the local environment on stand growth and structures development (such as canopy cover, diffuse light or disturbances regime). The mechanism for forestry's direct and indirect effect on forest heterogeneity is not precise and may leave space for open interpretation. This study evaluates the effect of direct and indirect management on forest heterogeneity in temperate mixed managed forests.
We used a structural equation model to analyze the mechanism and compare forestry's direct and indirect effect on forest heterogeneity on observed data, simulated mature forest and simulated young forest. Our analysis found that direct management has a stronger influence than the indirect effect on forest heterogeneity in observed data and simulated young forest. However, we found a stronger effect of indirect management effects on heterogeneity for the simulated mature forest.
Our study shows how forest management directly increases forest heterogeneity in the early stages of forest development. This highlight the importance of forest management in the early stages, while indirect effects of forest management are manifested only in mature forests.