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Adam Felton, lecturer
Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre
adam.felton@slu.se, 040-415171
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“Coerced” resilience may risk other forest values
Published: 29 August 2024
Repeated intensive interventions to enhance the resilience of production forests to climate change and other risks could have unintended negative consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem services, researchers argue in an article in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Efforts to ensure that production forests provide their intended benefits despite climate change and other stressors are often framed in terms of enhancing the resilience of these systems.
The path matters
This resilience can be achieved either through natural ecological processes or through repeated, intensive human interventions. The chosen approach will have significant implications for forest biodiversity, ecosystem services, and the ability of production forests to recover from unforeseen disturbances.
Production forests are frequently subjected to heavy and repeated human modifications, which standardize their natural variability in structure and function to ensure the predictable delivery of a few desired outputs.
Risks with coerced resilience
However, as natural ecological processes are replaced, production forests may become increasingly dependent on continuous human intervention to maintain resilience. Based on recent findings the SLU and international researchers caution against this “coerced” form of resilience.
"An over-reliance on coerced resilience may exacerbate biodiversity loss, narrow the range of ecosystem services provided, and limit overall resilience," warns lead author Adam Felton, Associate professor at the Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre.
Cost of mitigating windthrow risk
For example, in even-aged conifer monocultures, shortening rotation lengths can reduce the risk of windthrow damage but may negatively impact ecosystem services such as roundwood, wild berry, and mushroom production, water quality, soil nutrient retention, and cultural services that involve aesthetic and recreational values.
“On the other hand, diversifying tree species composition could reduce a stand’s vulnerability to both specific and unknown abiotic and biotic risks, while also enhancing habitat availability and expanding the range of ecosystem services provided,” Adam Felton says.
This research was funded by the Swedish Research Council Formas.
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a, For production forests located on the left-hand side, system resilience is primarily conferred by ecological processes that provide ecological resilience. Towards the right-hand side, anthropogenic inputs increasingly determine system resilience and thereby result in coerced resilience. b, Proposed solutions to disturbance can rely to a greater or lesser extent on ecological or coerced resilience to achieve system stability. For example, rotationally clear-cut, even-aged planted stands — dominated by a single species of native or non-native conifer — are typical of many wood production forests. Production forests in this category are often deemed susceptible to a range of abiotic and biotic disturbances, for which highly contrasting solutions are advocated as effective responses, as illustrated here with five examples. c, The choices taken have implications for the key drivers of habitat availability in production forests, the specific combinations and portfolio of ecosystem services provided, as well as the known and unknown disturbances to which the production forest is resilient, and whether general versus specified resilience is achieved. Grafikkoncept: Linnéa Felton.
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Links:
Artikeln i Nature Ecology & evolution: The choice of path to resilience is crucial to the future of production forests