IUFRO Spotlights

2016-03-07

IUFRO Spotlight #37 - Conserving Biodiversity While Managing Tropical Forests

A new publication looks at the long-term impacts of silvicultural interventions on tree species composition and diversity.


Managed forests are important landscape components in tropical regions. But an understanding of the response of the forests' biodiversity to silvicultural interventions has been limited. Finding out more about how that biodiversity responds was a fundamental question behind the research leading to the publication of "Medium-term dynamics of tree species composition in response to silvicultural intervention intensities in a tropical rain forest".

The authors looked at silvicultural interventions – harvesting and thinning – and how tree species composition and diversity were affected over a 30-year period in the Brazilian Amazon. These were compared to pre-logging conditions and an unlogged control. The researchers discovered that the strongest influence on tree species composition did not come from harvesting the mature trees, but from the collateral damage done to remaining trees by harvesting and then by the subsequent thinning of smaller trees.

 

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