Disturbance-based silviculture for habitat diversification: Effects on forest structure, dynamics, and carbon storage

• Published in: Forest ecology and management 2020-08, Vol.469, p.118132, Article 118132
• Main Authors: Thom, Dominik, Keeton, William S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Beta diversity; CARBON storage; Disturbance-based forestry; Forest management; Forest structure; Habitat; Silviculture; Silviculture with Birds in Mind; Wind disturbance
• ISSN: 0378-1127; 1872-7042
• DOI: 10.1016/j.foreco.2020.118132

•We analysed disturbance-based silvicultural treatments at 217 inventory plots.•Treatments enhanced the variation in individual structural elements.•However, treatments did not fully approximate partial wind disturbances.•Carbon storage was positively associated with stand structural complexity.•Managing for bird habitats improves forest heterogeneity while maintaining high carbon stocks. Disturbance-based silviculture is of increasing interest as an approach to provide multiple ecosystem services and beta diversity in habitat conditions. One such approach increasingly employed in the eastern U.S. is a set of forestry practices developed to diversify forested bird habitats, called Silviculture with Birds in Mind (SBM). While strongly appealing to many private landowners, empirical data have not yet been reported regarding the effects of SBM treatments on forest structure and dynamics and how they compare to natural disturbances. Moreover, the potential of bird-oriented silviculture like SBM to enhance co-benefits, for instance, by retaining high carbon stocks in managed forests, has not been investigated. The objectives of our study were thus (i) to analyze the effects of SBM treatments on forests and compare them with natural disturbances, and (ii) to assess the co-benefits of multiple habitat indicators and carbon storage within three years of silvicultural treatment in mature northern hardwood-conifer forests. We derived 14 stand structural variables as well as carbon storage from 217 SBM inventory plots, and compared them with the effects of intermediate-severity wind disturbance using non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS). Subsequently, we applied multi-hierarchical Bayesian models to investigate SBM treatment effects on aboveground carbon storage, as well as on four key habitat indicators. We also used Bayesian models to derive the relationships between habitat indicators and carbon storage. SBM treatments created a diversity of post-harvest stand conditions and, while having lower values for some structural characteristics in comparison to controls, significantly enhanced the variation in individual structural elements. Moreover, the treatments were closer in ordinal space to the irregular structure associated with intermediate-severity wind disturbance than untreated control plots. However, the NMDS indicated that SBM treatments did not fully approximate partial wind disturbances. Carbon storage was positively associated with stand structural