Conserving alpha and beta diversity in wood-productionlandscapes

GAVIN, JONES; BROSI, B J; EVANS, JASON; GOTTLIEB I G W; LOY, XINGWEN; NUNEZ REGUEIRO MAURICIO MANUEL; OBER, H; PIENAAR, ELIZABETH F.; PILLAY, R; PISSARELLO, K; SMITH, L; FLETCHER, ROBERT J.

CONSERVATION BIOLOGY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2021

0888-8892

AbstractInternational demand for wood and other forest products continues to grow rapidly, anduncertainties remain about how animal communities will respond to intensifying resourceextraction associated with woody bioenergy production. We examined changes in alphaand beta diversity of bats, bees, birds, and reptiles across wood production landscapes inthe southeastern United States, a biodiversity hotspot that is one of the principal sourcesof woody biomass globally. We sampled across a spatial gradient of paired forest land-uses (representing pre and postharvest) that allowed us to evaluate biological commu-nity changes resulting from several types of biomass harvest. Short-rotation practices andresidue removal following clearcuts were associated with reduced alpha diversity (−14.1and −13.9 species, respectively) and lower beta diversity (i.e., Jaccard dissimilarity) betweenland-use pairs (0.46 and 0.50, respectively), whereas midrotation thinning increased alpha(+3.5 species) and beta diversity (0.59). Over the course of a stand rotation in a single loca-tion, biomass harvesting generally led to less biodiversity. Cross-taxa responses to resourceextraction were poorly predicted by alpha diversity: correlations in responses between tax-onomic groups were highly variable (−0.2 to 0.4) with large uncertainties. In contrast,beta diversity patterns were highly consistent and predictable across taxa, where corre-lations in responses between taxonomic groups were all positive (0.05?0.4) with more nar-row uncertainties. Beta diversity may, therefore, be a more reliable and information-richindicator than alpha diversity in understanding animal community response to landscapechange. Patterns in beta diversity were primarily driven by turnover instead of species lossor gain, indicating that wood extraction generates habitats that support different biological communities.