Ground vegetation species richness in close-to-nature managed and protected forests after four decades of protection.
Dudek T, Bugno-Pogoda A, Tymińska-Czabańska L, Socha J
Forest Management
The mix of managed and protected forests in a region is what keeps rare wildflowers, ferns, and understory plants alive — lose either type, and entire communities of plants that took centuries to establish could quietly disappear.
Scientists studied over 670 forest plots in the Carpathian mountains to see whether letting forests grow wild or carefully managing them is better for plant life. They found it depends on the scale you look at: managed forests had more plant species in any given small area, likely because some tree cutting lets light in and creates varied habitats. But untouched protected forests harbored rarer, more specialized plants and greater variety across the whole region — species that can only survive where forests have been left undisturbed for a very long time.
Key Findings
Managed forests had higher plot-level (alpha) species richness, driven by structural openness and canopy variation created by forestry practices.
Protected forests supported significantly higher regional (gamma) diversity and greater species turnover (beta diversity), reflecting persistence of rare and specialist plant taxa.
Data from 671 plots over four decades showed that the scale of observation — local vs. regional — fundamentally changes conclusions about which management approach is 'better' for plant diversity.
chevron_right Technical Summary
A 40-year study of Polish mountain forests found that managed forests and protected forests each protect plant diversity in different but complementary ways — managed forests support more species locally, while protected forests harbor rarer species and greater regional variety.
Abstract Preview
The aim of this study was to comprehensively evaluate how close-to-nature forest management influences species richness of plant in comparison to protected forests. We adopted a multi-scale framewo...
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