Challenges and opportunities in the use of National Forest Inventories for the study of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services supply in forests

摘要

National forest inventories traditionally report on the condition and yield of a nation’s forest resource. They are typically surveyed at the national level,reported as part of the country’s national statistics and are increasingly becoming available to the scientific community for further analyses. Much ofour current understanding on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has come from temperate grassland experiments and research in forests, whereexperimentation is inherently difficult due to the large size and longevity of trees, has lagged behind. However, studies in forests have advanced inthe last decade, partly due to the availability of large-scale observational data, such as national forest inventories. Here, we review how forest inventorieshave promoted a better understanding of the effect of diversity in forest functioning. We summarised the main findings of the papers reviewedand present the results from harmonised forest inventories at European level, such as the EU FunDivEUROPE Project. A positive effect of treediversity on forest productivity and biomass has been generally found along large climatic and latitudinal gradients. There are few studies that integratemultiple functions and we suggest that future studies should include more functions at larger temporal and spatial scales to better understand therole of diversity under climate change.