Climate change and an accelerating loss of biodiversity result in unpredictable risks to the development of forest ecosystems. Forest management and the forest sciences face a high degree of uncertainty in combination with increasing demands for the provision of multiple, and sometimes conflicting, ecosystem services. In the densely populated landscapes of central Europe the demands placed on forests by society, and the corresponding management measures, target the provision of manifold ecosystem services. The ability of the current small-scale structure of forest ownership (e.g., properties often less than 5 ha) to provide for multiple ecosystem services simultaneously is questionable.
In the paper an approach addressing small forest sites is presented, utilising specific single tree-based information to compute the intensity at which defined ecosystem services are provided. Individual trees, oaks and pines, are taken to be “service providing units” (SPU). The example considered was a 3 ha, plantation-like pine stand with admixed oak (0.5–9% of stems). The simulations revealed that the intensity to which defined services were provided, and the degree of compatibility between different services, were determined by the pattern and proportion of the admixture of oaks in the pine stand. Taking six services into account simultaneously, namely (a) pine timber production, (b) biomass production, (c) freshwater production, (d) provision of habitat for Carabus coriaceus, (e) production of valuable oak timber, and (f) oak seedling establishment, a good solution was represented by a few small aggregates of oaks in combination with a single-tree admixture of oaks throughout the stand (table 2). It may be concluded that forest managers can deliberately structure their forest stands to provide defined ecosystem services. Furthermore, the compatibility of the services provided may be influenced by forest managers to a large extent. These conclusions apply to small-scale forestry and to large forest properties with spatially variegated demands. The silvicultural toolbox should be tested for its capacity to impact on the provision of specified services and on the compatibility of services in central European forests more generally.
Applied on a small spatial scale (forest stand), the provision of multiple services is possible by means of a tar target- oriented management of forest structures, whereas on a larger spatial scale (landscape) conflicts between ecosystem services might be reduced by identifying priority areas.
