Traditional forest management practices stop forest succession and bring back rare plant species

Past management practices may continue to influence ecosystem functions and processes for decades, centuries or even longer after they have been abandoned. Until now, few researchers have attempted experiments which test the effects of restoring some of these past management practices on long-term community developmental trajectories.

Strong evidence indicates that the diversity of various taxonomic groups declined in European lowland forests in the second half of the 20th century, following the abandonment of some traditional forest management practices. We carried out a five-year field trial in a lowland thermophilous oak forest to describe the effects of restoration of litter raking and grass cutting on the long-term developmental trajectory of species composition and the diversity of understorey vegetation. We used target species groups, i.e. species specific to thermophilous forests and dry grassland vegetation and plant functional traits to evaluate the restoration success usin...