The BIOKLIM Project in the National Park Bavarian Forest : Lessons from a biodiversity survey

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Bässler, Claus ; Seifert, Linda ; Müller, Jörg:
The BIOKLIM Project in the National Park Bavarian Forest : Lessons from a biodiversity survey.
In: Silva Gabreta. Bd. 21 (2015) . - S. 81-93.
ISSN 1211-7420

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Abstract

Biodiversity is diminishing globally at an unprecedented rate in times of intensive land use and ongoing climate change. Since biodiversity is related to important ecosystem functions and ecosystem services it is nowadays the goal by law to maintain and improve biodiversity. One instrument to achieve this goal is the establishment of protected areas. We carried out a large biodiversity survey (BIOKLIM-Project) within the National Park Bavarian Forest (German part of the Bohemian Forest) to provide a broad range of data to assess the effects of the benign neglect strategy on species and communities across different taxonomic groups. A further aim was to assess and predict the consequences of climate change on the low mountain range. We provided evidence that the benign neglect strategy leading to large scale disturbance by bark beetle increased habitat heterogeneity and consequently overall species diversity in former commercial forest. Our study furthermore showed that species assemblages are currently under re-organization caused by climate change. Our findings supported the National Park management and contributed to the question how biodiversity respond due to the benign neglect strategy. Our results underline the importance of gathering long term biodiversity data in order to answer numerous upcoming questions in times of heavy humancaused environmental change. Such data finally inspired forest managers, conservation biologists, and ecologists. As a bunch of new hypotheses arose during BIOKLIM, we already set up some experiments as a complementary tool to deepen our understanding on specific objects such like dead-wood ecology.