Biodiversity and forest structures at the Zurich Wilderness Park Sihlwald
Elena Haeler, HAFL - School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences, University of Bern (CH)
The Sihlwald forest is a young forest reserve still recovering from over 500 years of intensive wood harvesting, which stopped in 2000. Therefore, it stands at the beginning of its development back into an old-growth forest. As starting point for a long term monitoring, we investigate species communities dependent on old-growth structures and/or dead wood: saproxylic beetles, wood inhabiting fungi, mosses and lichens. To explore this dependence we study the question: How does habitat availability (e.g. dead wood) in terms of quantity and distribution influence biodiversity and at which spatial scale can we find the effects?