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Reconciling Biodiversity Conservation and Timber Production in Mixed Uneven-Aged Mountain Forests: Identification of Ecological Intensification Pathways

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Abstract

Mixed uneven-aged forests are considered favorable to the provision of multiple ecosystem services and to the conciliation of timber production and biodiversity conservation. However, some forest managers now plan to increase the intensity of thinning and harvesting operations in these forests. Retention measures or gap creation are considered to compensate potential negative impacts on biodiversity. Our objectives were to assess the effect of these management practices on timber production and biodiversity conservation and identify potential compensating effects between these practices, using the concept of ecological intensification as a framework. We performed a simulation study coupling Samsara2, a simulation model designed for spruce-fir uneven-aged mountain forests, an uneven-aged silviculture algorithm, and biodiversity models. We analyzed the effect of parameters related to uneven-aged management practices on timber production, biodiversity, and sustainability indicators. Our study confirmed that the indicators responded differently to management practices, leading to trade-offs situations. Increasing management intensity had negative impacts on several biodiversity indicators, which could be partly compensated by the positive effect of retention measures targeting large trees, non-dominant species, and deadwood. The impact of gap creation was more mitigated, with a positive effect on the diversity of tree sizes and deadwood but a negative impact on the spruce-fir mixing balance and on the diversity of the understory layer. Through the analysis of compensating effects, we finally revealed the existence of possible ecological intensification pathways, i.e., the possibility to increase management intensity while maintaining biodiversity through the promotion of nature-based management principles (gap creation and retention measures).

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Clémentine Prieur and Robert Faivre for their methodological support as regards the experiment design, sensitivity analysis, and metamodeling approach, as well as for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. We are grateful to François de Coligny for his help with the programming work, and to Frédéric Gosselin for his work on the adaptation and implementation of the understory vegetation models in Samsara2. We also thank three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. This work was financially supported by both the GeForHet Project (No. E23/2010), from the French research program “Biodiversity, Forest Management and Public Policy” (BGF), and the European Research Project “Advanced multifunctional forest management in European mountain ranges” (ARANGE, No. 289437).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Irstea–EMGR, 2 Rue de la Papeterie, BP 76, 38402, Saint-Martin-d’Hères Cedex, France

    Valentine Lafond, Thomas Cordonnier & Benoît Courbaud

  2. Université Grenoble Alpes, 38402, Grenoble, France

    Valentine Lafond, Thomas Cordonnier & Benoît Courbaud

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  1. Valentine Lafond
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Correspondence to Valentine Lafond.

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Lafond, V., Cordonnier, T. & Courbaud, B. Reconciling Biodiversity Conservation and Timber Production in Mixed Uneven-Aged Mountain Forests: Identification of Ecological Intensification Pathways. Environmental Management 56, 1118–1133 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-015-0557-2

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