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

风暴亚文是过去十年中最强大和最具破坏性的冬季风暴之一。英国东部的森林种植园遭受了风暴Arwen的严重破坏，这提供了一个短暂的紧急研究机会，为森林管理的生物多样性和气候适应能力以及基本生态系统过程的创新工作奠定基础。风阻是一个自然过程，通过砍伐或连根拔起局部口袋中的树木或覆盖整个林分，在自然森林和生产森林中产生各种规模的空隙。枯木分解的过程会产生大量可用的营养物质，这些营养物质是即时的，而且是短暂的。然后，树木的分解会持续数十年，并可能导致树洞的形成或被许多脊椎动物用作筑巢地点或庇护所的树洞。阳光和养分的输入改变了土壤，加速了地面植被的生长，从而可能在整个生态系统中产生连锁反应。亚文风暴发生时，英国林业部门已经在研究加速生物多样性恢复的新机制。特别是，发展抵御极端事件、新害虫和病原体频率预期增加的能力，以及增加碳固存的迫切需要。风暴亚文和支持这一紧急提案的合作伙伴关系促使英格兰林业公司致力于一项潜在的变革性景观规模的实验，涉及被风吹散的木材和枯木的命运。此紧急奖助金的目标是：A。为了与英国林业共同设计和实施一项在景观尺度上进行的实验，利用大面积风吹木材的可用性来评估以下管理方案的长期生物多样性效益：-风吹地区将被采伐，砍伐的木材将被回收，然后重新种植多种作物和落叶树种（包括桦树，白杨，云杉，冷杉，松树）。-被风吹过的地区将不会采伐，砍伐后的木材将被留下，并重新种植（种类如上）。被风吹过的地区不会被砍伐，倒下的木材会被留下，不需要重新种植，允许自然再生（非干预）。-以锡特卡云杉和苏格兰松为主的非风吹控制区。由于腐烂过程将在春季开始，我们将紧急设计和实施一个实地样本收集计划，以提供一个关键的基线。抽样的重点将是记录因保留倒下的木材而产生的过程的速率、幅度和空间范围。它们包括目前锁在树木中的营养物质的最终释放，随后被真菌和无脊椎动物以溶解的有机物为食进行隔离，然后被草和小灌木吸收，随着时间的推移，导致脊椎动物种群的变化，以响应森林中的植被和结构变化（人工林目前缺乏重要的林下高等植物）。因此，重点是对大西洋气候中人工造林的针叶树的反应的幅度和时间进行量化，这些反应在很大程度上仍然是未知的。现场取样和分析方法在很大程度上是标准的，并在阿伯丁大学或长期合作机构中使用。它们将包括精确测量枯木和直立木的数量，木材和土壤中的基本营养物质，真菌对木材的定植率，甲虫、草、灌木和树木、雀形鸟和啄木鸟、小型哺乳动物（老鼠、田鼠、松鼠）和重点脊椎动物捕食者（貂鼠和猫头鹰）对枯木的定植速度和速率，所有这些都将在地块水平上进行分析。

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.