Data from: Debarking harvesters simultaneously combat the European spruce bark beetle Ips typographus and conserve non-target beetle diversity

In the face of climate change, the European Spruce Bark Beetle (Ips
typographus) breeding predominantly in Norway spruce (Picea abies) led to
exceptional amounts of damaged timber in European forests. Up to now, if
pest control is applied, damaged or weakened P. abies trees are either
extracted by salvage logging or, when quantities are low, made unsuitable
for breeding by manual debarking techniques. Both pest control
interventions are costly, are often limited by the short timeframe of
effectiveness and come with negative impacts on the non-target
biodiversity. As alternatives for timely removal, a debarking head for
harvesters for large scale disturbances and a bark gouging device for
motor-manual treatment have been developed in recent years to make
breeding material unsuitable for bark beetles and reduce existing larvae.
Based on data from an experimental design with infested Norway spruce
logs, we show that the harvester debarking head and the motor-manual bark
gouging regulate I. typographus populations efficiently, whereas a
conventional harvester did not reduce the emerging bark beetles. Species
assemblages of non-target beetles living in the infested Norway spruce
logs were altered from the natural species assemblages in control logs by
processing logs with the debarking head or the bark gouging device but not
by the conventional harvester. None of the bark treatments reduced
non-target beetle species richness in this experiment. We endorse the
debarking head and bark gouging as alternatives to salvage logging and
manual debarking. This uncouples pest control from in-time dependencies on
the availability of transport capacities. Further, the debarking head and
bark gouging open up the opportunity to retain dead wood biomass in the
forest, supporting ecological benefits and conservation goals.
Particularly for protected areas these two new management option better
balance requirements of pest control and biodiversity conservation.