Estimates of historical disturbance patterns are essential to guide forest management aimed at ensuring the sustainability of ecosystem functions and biodiversity. However, quantitative estimates of various disturbance characteristics required in management applications are rare in longer‐term historical studies. Thus, our objectives were to (1) quantify past disturbance severity, patch size, and stand proportion disturbed and (2) test for temporal and subregional differences in these characteristics. We developed a comprehensive dendrochronological method to evaluate an approximately two‐century‐long disturbance record in the remaining Central and Eastern European primary mountain spruce forests, where wind and bark beetles are the predominant disturbance agents. We used an unprecedented large‐scale nested design data set of 541 plots located within 44 stands and 6 subregions. To quantify individual disturbance events, we used tree‐ring proxies, which were aggregated at plot and stand levels by smoothing and detecting peaks in their distributions. The spatial aggregation of disturbance events was used to estimate patch sizes. Data exhibited continuous gradients from low‐ to high‐severity and small‐ to large‐size disturbance events. In addition to the importance of small disturbance events, moderate‐scale (25–75% of the stand disturbed, >10 ha patch size) and moderate‐severity (25–75% of canopy disturbed) events were also common. Moderate disturbances represented more than 50% of the total disturbed area and their rotation periods ranged from one to several hundred years, which is within the lifespan of local tree species. Disturbance severities differed among subregions, whereas the stand proportion disturbed varied significantly over time. This indicates partially independent variations among disturbance characteristics. Our quantitative estimates of disturbance severity, patch size, stand proportion disturbed, and associated rotation periods provide rigorous baseline data for future ecological research, decisions within biodiversity conservation, and silviculture intended to maintain native biodiversity and ecosystem functions. These results highlight a need for sufficiently large and adequately connected networks of strict reserves, more complex silvicultural treatments that emulate the natural disturbance spectrum in harvest rotation times, sizes, and intensities, and higher levels of tree and structural legacy retention.

中文翻译：

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使用大规模树木年代学重建来量化自然干扰，以指导森林管理。

对历史干扰模式的估计对于指导旨在确保生态系统功能和生物多样性可持续性的森林管理至关重要。但是，在长期的历史研究中，很少有管理应用中需要的各种干扰特征的定量估计。因此，我们的目标是（1）量化过去的干扰严重程度，斑块大小和受干扰的林分比例，以及（2）测试这些特征在时间和分区上的差异。我们开发了一种综合的树轮年代学方法，以评估其余中欧和东欧原始云杉林中大约两个世纪以来的扰动记录，其中风和树皮甲虫是主要的扰动因子。我们使用了史无前例的大规模嵌套设计数据集，该数据集位于44个站和6个子区域中的541个地块。为了量化单个干扰事件，我们使用树环代理，通过平滑和检测其分布中的峰值，将它们聚集在地块和林分级别。干扰事件的空间聚集用于估计斑块大小。数据表现出从低到高严重度和从小到大扰动事件的连续梯度。除了小规模干扰事件的重要性外，中等规模的事件（林分干扰的占25-75％，斑块面积大于10公顷）和中等强度的事件（林冠扰动的占25-75％）也很常见。中度扰动占总扰动面积的50％以上，其旋转周期为一到数百年，在当地树种的寿命内。次区域的干扰严重程度不同，而受干扰的林分比例随时间变化很大。这表明干扰特性之间存在部分独立的变化。我们对干扰严重性，斑块大小，受干扰林分比例以及相关轮换周期的定量估计为未来的生态研究，生物多样性保护范围内的决策以及旨在维持本地生物多样性和生态系统功能的造林提供了严格的基准数据。这些结果突显了对足够大且充分连接的严格储备网络，更复杂的造林处理的需求，这些处理要模仿收获轮换时间，大小和强度的自然干扰谱，