Session: Leveraging Natural Disturbances for Forest Transformation

Beschreibung / Description

The unprecedented disturbance period from 2018 to 2020 in temperate European forests likely foreshadows future disturbance regimes. This new dimension of disturbance extent and severity, coupled with the intensification of climate change, calls for novel management approaches to promote adaptive tree species compositions and forest structures. In view of disturbance regimes, foresters face significant uncertainty in managing major disturbances before and after they occur. While salvage logging remains a dominant response to disturbances, alternative approaches that integrate structural legacies of disturbed forests may offer ecological and silvicultural benefits.

This session explores strategies that harness natural disturbances to support forest transformation. We welcome oral presentations and poster sessions that address:

• the resilience of severely disturbed forests
• biodiversity and ecosystem services in post-disturbance landscapes
• effectiveness of natural regeneration dynamics and artificial regeneration in disturbed areas
• the role of disturbance legacies such as deadwood and structural retention for microclimatic buffering and forest regeneration
• novel silvicultural concepts that integrate disturbance ecology into adaptive management
• the treatment and use of pioneer forests and nurse crops („Vorwald“)

By bringing together researchers and practitioners, this session aims to foster discussions on how disturbances may serve to promote resilient and adaptive forests. The session is of high scientific relevance, as research on large disturbed areas remains limited, and of practical relevance, as it addresses a timely topic from both the scientific and the management perspectives.

Keywords: Forest regeneration, Natural disturbances, Retention forestry, Climate resilience, Post-disturbance management