Sustainable forest planning : assessing biodiversity effects of Triad zoning based on empirical data and virtual landscapes

Duflot, Rémi (author), Nagel, Thomas Andrew (author)

The Triad framework seeks to balance the economic and ecological functions in forested landscapes by combining intensively, extensively, and unmanaged areas, assuming a higher support to biodiversity in extensively rather than in intensively managed forests. We quantified the effects of Triad zoning on biodiversity in (sub)montane eutrophic European beech forests. Using a European-wide multitaxon database and a “virtual” landscape approach (i.e., by resampling empirical data), we evaluated how the proportion of Triad management categories affected the landscape-level species diversity of birds, saproxylic beetles, vascular plants, epiphytic bryophytes, lichens, and wood-inhabiting fungi, as well as multitaxonomic diversity. The results varied greatly among taxonomic groups. Multitaxonomic diversity peaked in landscapes composed of 60% unmanaged and 40% intensively managed forests. While intensive management can benefit some taxa through the creation of open habitats, unmanaged forests are the backbone of biodiversity conservation, underlining the need to safeguard the remaining old-growth forests under natural dynamics, and to extend the current area of unmanaged forests in Europe. Extensive forest management, however, did not contribute to biodiversity conservation as expected. As withdrawing such a high proportion of European forest landscapes from management is unfeasible given the increasing demand for timber, efforts are needed to increase the presence of structural features supporting biodiversity into extensively managed forests.

• Language: English
• Keywords: forestry, biodiversity conservation, gamma diversity, forest management, landscape planning
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: BF - Biotechnical Faculty
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: 10 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 122, no. 39, art. e2512683122
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-174062
• UDC: 630*6:574.1
• ISSN on article: 1091-6490
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2512683122
• COBISS.SI-ID: 250481155
• Publication date in RUL: 26.09.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
• Shortened title: Proc Natl Acad USA
• Publisher: National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
• ISSN: 1091-6490
• COBISS.SI-ID: 250481155

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: gozdarstvo, ohranjanje biotske raznovrstnosti, gama diverziteta, gospodarjenje z gozdovi, krajinsko načrtovanje