Forest structure and biodiversity: revisiting the evidence and assessing future trajectories with the process-based model LPJ-GUESS

Dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) are increasingly capable of representing key forest structural attributes, such as canopy layers, deadwood, and size distributions (Eckes‐Shephard et al., 2025). Because these structural characteristics are frequently used as proxies for biodiversity, this improved modelling capacity offers new opportunities to project how forest biodiversity may respond to climate change and management.

However, despite their widespread use, the empirical relationship between forest structure and biodiversity remains unclear. Structural features often correlate positively with some taxa but show weak or even negative associations with others. The last major synthesis (Gao et al. 2015) highlighted this inconsistency, demonstrating that structural metrics differ greatly in their predictive power across species groups, forest types, and regions. Since then, many new studies have emerged, offering an opportunity to reassess which structural indicators are most reliable and in which context. We will therefore update the meta-analysis of Gao et al. (2015) with one decade of new studies, to identify robust taxon-specific structural indicators of biodiversity for European forests. We will then use the Dynamic Global Vegetation Model LPJ-GUESS (Lindeskog et al., 2021) to simulate the trajectories of these indicators under alternative climate and forest management scenarios. Through these projections, we will be able to determine which management strategies are likely to enhance or diminish biodiversity across different taxa, supporting a more comprehensive assessment of future biodiversity risks and opportunities.

 

Eckes‐Shephard, A. H., Argles, A. P., Brzeziecki, B., Cox, P. M., De Kauwe, M. G., Esquivel‐Muelbert, A., ... & Pugh, T. A. (2025). Demography, dynamics and data: building confidence for simulating changes in the world's forests. New Phytologist.

Gao, T., Nielsen, A. B., & Hedblom, M. (2015). Reviewing the strength of evidence of biodiversity indicators for forest ecosystems in Europe. Ecological Indicators, 57, 420-434.

Lindeskog, M., Lagergren, F., Smith, B., & Rammig, A. (2021). Accounting for forest management in the estimation of forest carbon balance using the dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS (v4. 0, r9333): Implementation and evaluation of simulations for Europe. Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 2021, 1-42.