ArticleRoyal Society open science2017
The importance of forest structure to biodiversity-productivity relationships.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- From individual trees to virtual forests: a comprehensive 3D structural dataset of Central European tree species.Data in brief · 2026Article
- Drivers of Genetic Diversity in Keystone Forest Species: Contrasting Responses of Rare and Common Saproxylic Beetles to Habitat Location and Naturalness.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Forest dynamics where typhoon winds blow.The New phytologist · 2025Article
- Environmental correlates of the forest carbon distribution in the Central Himalayas.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- A new approach to derive productivity of tropical forests using radar remote sensing measurements.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- A critical assessment of the biodiversity-productivity relationship in forests and implications for conservation.Oecologia · 2023Review
- Contribution of tree community structure to forest productivity across a thermal gradient in eastern Asia.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Machine learning assisted remote forestry health assessment: a comprehensive state of the art review.Frontiers in plant science · 2023Review
- Post-disturbance reorganization of forest ecosystems in a changing world.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Integrating terrestrial laser scanning with functional-structural plant models to investigate ecological and evolutionary processes of forest communities.Annals of botany · 2021Article
- Tackling unresolved questions in forest ecology: The past and future role of simulation models.Ecology and evolution · 2021Review
- Anthropogenic Pressure on Tree Species Diversity, Composition, and Growth ofPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Biodiversity response to forest management intensity, carbon stocks and net primary production in temperate montane forests.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Confronting an individual-based simulation model with empirical community patterns of grasslands.PloS one · 2020Article
- Mapping functional diversity from remotely sensed morphological and physiological forest traits.Nature communications · 2017Article
- The importance of forest structure to biodiversity-productivity relationships.Royal Society open science · 2017Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
While various relationships between productivity and biodiversity are found in forests, the processes underlying these relationships remain unclear and theory struggles to coherently explain them. In this work, we analyse diversity-productivity relationships through an examination of forest structure (described by basal area and tree height heterogeneity). We use a new modelling approach, called 'forest factory', which generates various forest stands and calculates their annual productivity (above-ground wood increment). Analysing approximately 300 000 forest stands, we find that mean forest productivity does not increase with species diversity. Instead forest structure emerges as the key variable. Similar patterns can be observed by analysing 5054 forest plots of the German National Forest Inventory. Furthermore, we group the forest stands into nine forest structure classes, in which we find increasing, decreasing, invariant and even bell-shaped relationships between productivity and diversity. In addition, we introduce a new index, called optimal species distribution, which describes the ratio of realized to the maximal possible productivity (by shuffling species identities). The optimal species distribution and forest structure indices explain the obtained productivity values quite well (
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