To increase ecosystem resilience and biodiversity, the maintenance and improvement of structural and compositional diversity of forests has become an important goal in forest management for many forest owners and jurisdictions. At the same time, future harvesting intensity (HI) may increase to meet the demand for woody biomass by an increasing bioeconomy sector. Yet, the influence of HI on forest structural diversity is largely unknown. Here, we address this issue by analyzing the relationship between HI and structural diversity based on large-scale national forest inventory (NFI) data, where the latter is quantified using a previously developed Forest Structure Index and HI is expressed as wood volume removal during the period 2002–2012 for the same inventory plots. Our results show a surprisingly small impact of harvesting intensity on changes in structural diversity for most of the analysed types of forests. Only intense harvesting (> 80%–90% of initial growing stock) led to a significant reduction in structural diversity. At low to moderate HI most aspects of structural diversity were positively influenced. Only the quadratic mean DBH and the volume of large trees (≥ 40 cm DBH) were substantially negatively influenced at HI > 60% and 70% of initial growing stock, respectively. In several forest types, HI could be increased without a reduction in overall structural diversity. Hence, structural diversity in these selectively managed forests appears to be a very resistant forest property in relation to HI. Other indicators at stand and landscape scale may be needed to adjust levels of HI that are suited to maintain forest biodiversity.

中文翻译：

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评估采伐强度对德国西南部森林结构多样性的影响

为了提高生态系统的复原力和生物多样性，维持和改善森林的结构和组成多样性已成为许多森林所有者和司法管辖区进行森林管理的重要目标。同时，随着生物经济的发展，未来的采伐强度可能会增加，以满足对木质生物量的需求。但是，HI对森林结构多样性的影响在很大程度上尚不清楚。在这里，我们通过基于大规模国家森林清单（NFI）数据分析HI与结构多样性之间的关系来解决此问题，其中，NFI是使用先前开发的森林结构指数进行量化的，HI表示为在此期间的木材采伐量。同一库存地段的2002-2012年期间。我们的结果表明，对于大多数分析类型的森林，采伐强度对结构多样性变化的影响都出乎意料地小。只有大量采伐（>初始生长种群的80％至90％）才能导致结构多样性的显着减少。在中等偏低的HI下，结构多样性的大多数方面都受到积极影响。当HI>初始生长种群的60％和70％时，仅二次平均DBH和大树（≥40 cm DBH）的体积受到显着负面影响。在几种森林类型中，HI可以增加而不降低总体结构多样性。因此，相对于HI，这些选择性管理的森林中的结构多样性似乎是非常抗拒的森林性质。