From the ground up: Managing young forests for a range of ecosystem outcomes

Abstract The ecological value of unmanaged early successional habitat created by disturbances has received considerable research attention. Less well studied is the capacity of tree plantations to contribute to local and regional biological diversity while subsidizing conservation strategies. We present a conceptual framework for describing variability in early successional forests and illustrate how the spatial pattern of this habitat may vary as a function of productivity, land ownership, and disturbance in the Pacific Northwest, USA. We posit that plantations will only increase in ecological and economic importance as the world addresses conservation and resource production challenges associated with climate change, altered disturbance regimes, increasing rates of global wood consumption, and evolving social, legal, and economic expectations. Researchers and managers can foster collaborative frameworks to encourage provisioning of non-timber services on private land, while prioritizing non-timber benefits of early successional habitat on public land to optimize biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services provided in managed forest landscapes.