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

Authors

Rémi Duflot, Steffi Heinrichs, Lorenzo Balducci, Francesco Chianucci, Jeňýk Hofmeister, Yoan Paillet, Giovanni Trentanovi, Frédéric Archaux, Steffen Boch, Christophe Bouget, Daniel Dvořák, Markus Fischer, Frédéric Gosselin, Marion Gosselin, Martin M Gossner, Eva Holá, Jan Hošek, Kirsten Jung, Zdeněk Palice, Swen C Renner, Wolfgang W Weisser, Thomas A Nagel, Sabina Burrascano, Peter Schall

Published in

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Volume 122. Issue 39. Pages e2512683122. Sep 30, 2025. Epub Sep 22, 2025.

Abstract

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.

PMID:
40982690
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 23 Sep 2025.

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