Our research at the GfÖ annual meeting 2024

A key question was which forest management practices are best suited to promote a species-rich forest landscape. In a recently published review on forest management techniques and as part of the Walddiskurs project, we have analysed this question.

In the review, Britta Uhl and her colleagues analyse how different management techniques affect biodiversity, based on a literature review. The authors provide a comprehensive overview of the different management systems, their effects on alpha, beta and gamma diversity and offer a theoretical outlook on how a suitable management approach aiming at promoting biodiverse forests could look like.

The Walddiskurs project focuses on the importance of forests for biodiversity conservation and climate protection. Julian Lunow and his colleagues have developed a structural equation model to understand the interactions between forest characteristics, carbon stocks and the richness of different taxonomic groups. Key findings include positive effects of stand age and tree richness on carbon stocks in deadwood, and increasing carbon stocks with increasing stand age. High deadwood diversity also had a positive effect on carbon stocks in dead wood as did the diversity of birds, saproxylic beetles and saproxylic fungi.

Our PhD student Karla Wenner presented her PhD project UrbanPArt. The project focuses on the phenology of arthropod communities in urban green spaces and the influence of management practices. Preliminary results show significant differences in plant species diversity and vegetation structure between semi-natural, extensively managed areas and intensively managed urban areas. The plant species composition also differed between the different management categories. These results highlight the importance of including management and vegetation parameters in further analyses.

We look back on a great conference week and would like to thank the Technical University of Munich for the excellent organisation of the GfÖ conference in Freising. We are looking forward to organising the 54th Annual Conference of the Society for Ecology at the University of Würzburg in September 2025 together with the other Ecology Chairs!