Biodiversity and focal species response-diversity to different management prescriptions following severe windblow caused by Storm Arwen.

阿尔文风暴是过去十年中最强大、最具破坏性的冬季风暴之一。风暴Arwen对英国东部的森林种植园造成了严重的破坏，这提供了一个短暂而紧迫的研究机会，为森林管理方面的创新工作奠定了基础，以促进生物多样性和气候适应能力以及基本的生态系统过程。风抛是一个自然过程，通过折断或连根拔起，将树木放在局部口袋中或覆盖整个林分，在天然林和生产林中造成不同规模的缺口。枯木的分解过程--大量可利用的营养物质的涌入--是直接和短暂的。然后，树木的分解跨越数十年，可能导致树栖洞穴的形成，或者许多脊椎动物用作筑巢地点或庇护所的树洞。阳光和养分输入到土壤中会改变和加速地面植被，然后这些植被可能会席卷整个生态系统。风暴Arwen发生时，英国林业局已经在研究加快生物多样性恢复的新机制。特别是，发展对极端事件、新的害虫和病原体频率的预期增加的复原力，以及增加碳固存的迫切需要。这项紧急拨款的目标是：a.与英格兰林业公司共同设计和实施一项景观规模的实验，利用可获得风化木材的广大地区来评估下列管理措施的长期生物多样性效益：-风化地区将被收获，倒下的木材将被回收，然后重新种植多样化的作物和落叶树种(包括白桦、白杨、云杉、冷杉、松树)。风化地区将不会被收割、倒下的木材、剩余的木材、松树将不会被收割。重新种植(物种如上)-风化地区将不会被收获，倒下的木材不会被留下，而不是重新种植，允许自然再生(不干预)。-未被风吹的控制区，主要是锡特卡云杉和苏格兰松树。由于腐烂过程将在春季开始，我们将紧急设计和实施野外样本收集计划，以提供关键的基线。抽样的重点将是记录由于保留被砍伐的木材而产生的过程的速度、程度和空间范围。它们包括目前锁定在树木中的营养物质最终释放，随后真菌和无脊椎动物以溶解的有机物为食进行封存，然后被草和小灌木吸收，随着时间的推移，导致脊椎动物协会对森林植被和结构变化的反应(种植园目前缺乏重要的林下高等植物)。因此，重点是量化反应的幅度和时间，而大西洋气候中的人工林场中的针叶树在很大程度上仍然未知。现场采样和分析方法在很大程度上是标准的，在阿伯丁大学或长期合作的机构中使用。它们将包括准确测量死木材和立木的数量，木材和土壤中的基线营养物质，真菌在木材上的定殖率，以及甲虫、草、灌木和树木、雀形目鸟类和啄木鸟、小型哺乳动物(老鼠、田鼠、松鼠)和局部脊椎动物捕食者(貂和猫头鹰)在枯木上定植的速度和速率，所有这些处理都将在小区层面进行分析。

Storm Arwen was one of the most powerful and damaging winter storms of the last decade. Forest plantations on the eastern side of the UK have experienced significant damage from Storm Arwen, This offers a short-lived urgent research opportunity to lay the foundations for innovative work on both forest management for biodiversity and climate resilience and fundamental ecosystem processes.Windthrow is a natural process creating gaps at various scales in natural and production forests by snapping or uprooting, trees in localised pockets or laying over entire stands. The process of decomposition of dead wood a large flush of available nutrients, are immediate and short lived. Tree decomposition then spans decades and can lead to arboreal cavity creation or treefall dens used as nesting sites or shelter by many vertebrates. Sunlight and nutrient inputs to the soil changes and accelerates ground vegetation that may then cascade through entire ecosystems. Storm Arwen occurred at a time when Forestry England was already investigating new mechanisms to accelerate biodiversity restoration. In particular, developing resilience to expected increases in the frequency of extreme events, new pests and pathogens, and the acute need to increase carbon sequestration. Storm Arwen and the partnership underpinning this Urgency proposal, have catalysed Forestry England to commit to a potentially transformative landscape scale experiment involving the fate of windblown timber and dead wood.The objectives of this Urgency grant are:A. To co-design and implement, with Forestry England an experiment conducted at a landscape scale making use of the availability of vast areas with windblown timber to evaluate the long term biodiversity benefits of the following management prescriptions:- Windblown areas will be harvested, fallen timber recovered, followed by replanting of diversified crop and deciduous tree species (including birch, aspen, spruces, firs, pines).- Windblown areas will not be harvested, fallen timber left, with replanting (species as above).- Windblown areas will not be harvested, fallen timber left, without replanting, allowing natural regeneration (non-intervention). - Non-windblown control areas dominated by Sitka's spruce and Scot's pine. Because the process of decay will start in spring, we will urgently design and implement a program of field sample collection to provide a crucial baseline. Sampling will be focused on documenting the rates, magnitudes and spatial extents of processes that arise from retaining fallen timber. They include the eventual release of nutrients currently locked in trees, following sequestration by fungi and invertebrates feeding on dissolved organic matter, then uptake by grasses and small bushes leading, over time, to changes in the vertebrate guilds responding to vegetation and structural changes in the forest (the plantations are presently devoid of significant understory higher plants).Thus, the focus is on quantifying the magnitude and timing of the responses which remain largely unknown for coniferous trees in man-made forest plantations in an Atlantic climate. Field sampling and analytical methods are largely standard and in use at the University of Aberdeen or long-standing collaborators institutions. They will include measuring precisely the amount of dead and standing wood, the baseline nutrients in wood and in soils, the rate of wood colonisation by fungi and the speed and rates of colonisation of beetles, grasses, shrubs and trees passerine birds and woodpeckers, small mammals (mice, voles, squirrels) and focal vertebrate predators (marten and owls) to dead wood and treatments will all be assayed at the plot-level.