Forests play a major role in the global carbon cycle, contain a substantial proportion of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity, and are valued for the services they provide to society. Since a large body of evidence now suggests biodiversity loss affects the functioning of ecosystems, the alarmingly high rate of biodiversity loss is worrisome considering emerging close links between biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and human well-being.
High species diversity is often associated with high productivity and ecosystem service (ES) provisioning, including carbon storage and sequestration. However, our ability to understand the consequences of biodiversity loss on the supply of a portfolio of multiple ES is still incomplete. Protecting forests and managing them sustainably is therefore important both to preserve biodiversity, and the services it underpins.
Managing forests for multiple objectives requires a thorough scientific understanding of the trade-offs and synergies between the multiple contributions of forests to human wellbeing. Testing how carbon and biodiversity can be jointly maintained or enriched in forest landscapes is particularly important, since it would allow forest-management strategies that jointly address climate change mitigation and biodiversity loss. Primary forests, i.e. naturally regenerated forests of native species where there are no clearly visible indications of human activities and the ecological processes are not significantly disturbed, are invaluable study systems for understanding the baselines of the delivery of ecosystem services under unmanaged conditions, including carbon stocks and sequestration, and possible trade-offs between ecosystem services and biodiversity.
The overarching goal of FORESTS and CO is to assess whether measures designed to protect forest biodiversity and to increase carbon stocks are mutually consistent or conflicting in European forests. Using primary forests to estimate baselines for carbon storage and biodiversity conservation potential for different forest types, the aim of FORESTS and CO is to model the relationships between carbon storage and biodiversity, and assess potential co-benefits or conflicts between them. We first built a network of forest researchers to gather existing data on primary forests in Europe, and create the first map of their distribution. We then used plot-level data to model the relationship between forest biodiversity and carbon storage in managed forests, since most forests in Europe are managed, and forest biodiversity therefore critically depends on these forests.
