Forest Management and Plant Diversity Dynamics

Forest management encompasses a range of deliberate interventions—such as selective thinning, coppicing, clear-felling, mixed-species planting and gap creation—designed to balance timber production, conservation and ecosystem services. These practices shape light regimes, soil properties and structural heterogeneity, with direct consequences for the establishment, abundance and composition of plant communities. Dynamic interactions between canopy layers and understorey vegetation underpin patterns of alpha diversity (species richness within a stand) and beta diversity (compositional turnover between stands). Traditional systems such as coppice-with-standards create recurring disturbances that favour early-successional herbs, shrubs and light-demanding trees, whereas high-forest management—involving longer rotation cycles and retention of veteran trees—promotes late-successional assemblages. Ownership mosaics and management intensity further influence landscape-scale diversity patterns by generating a matrix of differently aged stands and disturbance histories. Understanding these linkages is essential for reconciling production goals with biodiversity conservation and for designing adaptive silvicultural strategies that support resilient, multifunctional forest landscapes worldwide.

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Forest Management and Plant Diversity Dynamics publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in forest management and plant diversity dynamics across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Silviculture: The science and practice of controlling forest establishment, growth, composition and quality to meet diverse objectives.

Understorey: The layer of vegetation beneath the forest canopy, including shrubs, herbs and young trees.

Coppicing: A traditional rotational cutting system in which trees are cut to the stump to stimulate multi-stem regrowth.

Alpha diversity: The number and abundance distribution of species within a specific local area or habitat.

Beta diversity: The variation in species composition between different habitats, stands or time periods.

Functional diversity: The range and distribution of species’ ecological traits within a community that influence ecosystem processes.

References

1. On the Interplay of Ownership Patterns, Biodiversity, and Conservation in Past and Present Temperate Forest Landscapes of Europe and North America. Current Forestry Reports (2021).
2. Inter-annual variation in species composition and richness after coppicing in a restored coppice-with-standards forest. Forest Ecology and Management (2019).
3. Effect of forest structure and management on the functional diversity and composition of understorey plant communities. Applied Vegetation Science (2023).