Estimating retention benchmarks for salvage logging to protect biodiversity

Forests are increasingly affected by natural disturbances. Subsequent salvage logging, a widespread management practice conducted predominantly to recover economic capital, produces further disturbance and impacts biodiversity worldwide. Hence, naturally disturbed forests are among the most threaten...

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Published in:	Nature communications Vol. 11; no. 1; pp. 4762 - 8
Main Authors:	Thorn, Simon, Chao, Anne, Georgiev, Kostadin B., Müller, Jörg, Bässler, Claus, Campbell, John L., Castro, Jorge, Chen, Yan-Han, Choi, Chang-Yong, Cobb, Tyler P., Donato, Daniel C., Durska, Ewa, Macdonald, Ellen, Feldhaar, Heike, Fontaine, Joseph B., Fornwalt, Paula J., Hernández, Raquel María Hernández, Hutto, Richard L., Koivula, Matti, Lee, Eun-Jae, Lindenmayer, David, Mikusiński, Grzegorz, Obrist, Martin K., Perlík, Michal, Rost, Josep, Waldron, Kaysandra, Wermelinger, Beat, Weiß, Ingmar, Żmihorski, Michał, Leverkus, Alexandro B.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	London Nature Publishing Group UK 21-09-2020 Nature Portfolio
Subjects:	704/158/1145 704/158/2454 704/158/670 704/172/4081 Animals Benchmarking Biodiversity Conservation of Natural Resources - methods Ecosystem Forest Science Forestry - standards Forests Humanities and Social Sciences multidisciplinary Science Science (multidisciplinary) Skogsvetenskap Species Specificity
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Summary:	Forests are increasingly affected by natural disturbances. Subsequent salvage logging, a widespread management practice conducted predominantly to recover economic capital, produces further disturbance and impacts biodiversity worldwide. Hence, naturally disturbed forests are among the most threatened habitats in the world, with consequences for their associated biodiversity. However, there are no evidence-based benchmarks for the proportion of area of naturally disturbed forests to be excluded from salvage logging to conserve biodiversity. We apply a mixed rarefaction/extrapolation approach to a global multi-taxa dataset from disturbed forests, including birds, plants, insects and fungi, to close this gap. We find that 75 ± 7% (mean ± SD) of a naturally disturbed area of a forest needs to be left unlogged to maintain 90% richness of its unique species, whereas retaining 50% of a naturally disturbed forest unlogged maintains 73 ± 12% of its unique species richness. These values do not change with the time elapsed since disturbance but vary considerably among taxonomic groups. Salvage logging has become a common practice to gain economic returns from naturally disturbed forests, but it could have considerable negative effects on biodiversity. Here the authors use a recently developed statistical method to estimate that ca. 75% of the naturally disturbed forest should be left unlogged to maintain 90% of the species unique to the area.
ISSN:	2041-1723 2041-1723
DOI:	10.1038/s41467-020-18612-4