Retention of tree-related microhabitats is more dependent on selection of habitat trees than their spatial distribution
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Retention of tree‑related microhabitats is more dependent on selection of habitat trees than their spatial distribution Thomas Asbeck1 · Christian Messier2 · Jürgen Bauhus1 Received: 20 December 2019 / Revised: 17 June 2020 / Accepted: 26 June 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Habitat trees, which provide roosting, foraging and nesting for multiple taxa, are retained in managed forests to support biodiversity conservation. To what extent their spatial distribution influences provisioning of habitats has rarely been addressed. In this study, we investigated whether abundance and richness of tree-related microhabitats (TreMs) differ between habitat trees in clumped and dispersed distributions and whether the abundance of fifteen groups of TreMs is related to tree distribution patterns. To identify habitat trees, we quantified TreMs in temperate mountain forests of Germany. We determined clumping (the Clark–Evans index), size of the convex hull, diameter at breast height, as well as altitude, slope and aspect of sites for their possible influence on TreMs. We additionally determined the difference in TreM abundance and richness among four options of selecting five habitat trees per ha from 15 candidates: (a) the most clumped trees, (b) five randomly selected and dispersed trees, (c) the single tree with highest abundance or richness of TreMs and its four closest neighbors and (d) a “reference selection” of five trees with known highest abundance or richness of TreMs irrespective of their distribution. The degree of clumping and the size of the convex hull influenced neither the abundance nor richness of TreMs. The reference selection, option (d), contained more than twice the number of TreMs compared to the most clumped, (a), or random distributions, (b), of five habitat trees, while option (c) assumed an intermediate position. If the goal of habitat tree retention is to maximize stand-level abundance and richness of TreMs, then it is clearly more important to select habitat trees irrespective of their spatial pattern. Keywords Clark–Evans index · Retention forestry · Size of convex hull · Tree-related microhabitats · Selection of habitat trees
Introduction Communicated by Claus Bässler. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-020-01303-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Thomas Asbeck [email protected]‑freiburg.de Christian Messier [email protected] Jürgen Bauhus [email protected]‑freiburg.de 1
Chair of Silviculture, University of Freiburg, Tennenbacherstr. 4, 79085 Freiburg, Germany
Department of Natural Sciences, Institute of Temperate Forest Sciences and Centre for Forest Research (CEF), Université du Québec en Outaouais, 58 Rue Principale, Ripon, QC J0V 1V0, Canada
2
A global decline in large and old live trees as well as standing and fallen deadwood has been identified in most managed forests of the world (Müller and Bütler 2010; Lindenmayer et al. 201
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