Bark Beetles Increase Biodiversity While Maintaining Drinking Water Quality

Increasing natural disturbances in conifer forests worldwide complicate political decisions about appropriate land management. In particular, allowing insects to kill trees without intervention has intensified public debate over the dual roles of strictly protected areas to sustain ecosystem services and to conserve biodiversity. Here we show that after large scale bark beetle Ips typographus infestation in spruce Picea abies forests in southeastern Germany, maximum nitrate concentrations in runoff used for drinking water increased significantly but only temporarily at the headwater scale. Moreover, this major criterion of water quality remained consistently far below the limit recommended by the World Health Organization. At the same time, biodiversity, including numbers of Red‐listed species, increased for most taxa across a broad range of lineages. Our study provides strong support for a policy to allow natural disturbance‐recovery processes to operate unimpeded in conifer‐dominated mountain forests, especially within protected areas.

[1]  Werner Rammer,et al.  Increasing forest disturbances in Europe and their impact on carbon storage. , 2014, Nature climate change.

[2]  T. Hothorn,et al.  New Insights into the Consequences of Post-Windthrow Salvage Logging Revealed by Functional Structure of Saproxylic Beetles Assemblages , 2014, PloS one.

[3]  R. Maxwell,et al.  Hydrological effects of forest transpiration loss in bark beetle-impacted watersheds , 2014 .

[4]  R. Maxwell,et al.  Bark beetle infestation impacts on nutrient cycling, water quality and interdependent hydrological effects , 2013, Biogeochemistry.

[5]  Lukas W. Lehnert,et al.  Conservation value of forests attacked by bark beetles: Highest number of indicator species is found in early successional stages , 2013 .

[6]  M. Turner,et al.  Salvage harvest effects on advance tree regeneration, soil nitrogen, and fuels following mountain pine beetle outbreak in lodgepole pine , 2013 .

[7]  H. Di,et al.  Nitrogen losses from the soil/plant system: a review , 2013 .

[8]  G. Likens,et al.  Biogeochemistry of beetle-killed forests: Explaining a weak nitrate response , 2013, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[9]  J. Hicke,et al.  Cascading impacts of bark beetle‐caused tree mortality on coupled biogeophysical and biogeochemical processes , 2012 .

[10]  S. Acker.  Empire of the Beetle: How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug are Killing North America's Great Forests , 2012 .

[11]  J. Franklin,et al.  Multiple successional pathways and precocity in forest development: can some forests be born complex? , 2012 .

[12]  Robert K. Colwell,et al.  Models and estimators linking individual-based and sample-based rarefaction, extrapolation and comparison of assemblages , 2012 .

[13]  Miroslav Svoboda,et al.  Disturbance history of an old-growth sub-alpine Picea abies stand in the Bohemian Forest, Czech Republic , 2012 .

[14]  Alistair M. S. Smith,et al.  Ecohydrological consequences of drought‐ and infestation‐ triggered tree die‐off: insights and hypotheses , 2011 .

[15]  M. Turner,et al.  Nitrogen cycling following mountain pine beetle disturbance in lodgepole pine forests of Greater Yellowstone , 2011 .

[16]  D. Lindenmayer,et al.  The forgotten stage of forest succession: early-successional ecosystems on forest sites , 2011 .

[17]  M. Heurich,et al.  Factors affecting the spatio-temporal dispersion of Ips typographus (L.) in Bavarian Forest National Park: A long-term quantitative landscape-level analysis , 2011 .

[18]  Roland Brandl,et al.  Learning from a benign neglect strategy in a national park: Response of saproxylic beetles to dead wood accumulation , 2010 .

[19]  W. de Vries,et al.  Predicting dissolved inorganic nitrogen leaching in European forests using two independent databases. , 2009, The Science of the total environment.

[20]  Martin Müller,et al.  Managing natural disturbance in protected areas: tourists' attitude towards the bark beetle in a German national park. , 2009 .

[21]  D. Burns,et al.  Factors controlling soil water and stream water aluminum concentrations after a clearcut in a forested watershed with calcium-poor soils , 2007 .

[22]  T. D. Mitchell,et al.  Ecosystem Service Supply and Vulnerability to Global Change in Europe , 2005, Science.

[23]  T. Hothorn,et al.  Habitat factors for land snails in European beech forests with a special focus on coarse woody debris , 2005, European Journal of Forest Research.

[24]  Christian Huber,et al.  Long lasting nitrate leaching after bark beetle attack in the highlands of the Bavarian Forest National Park. , 2005, Journal of environmental quality.

[25]  D. Lindenmayer,et al.  Salvage Harvesting Policies After Natural Disturbance , 2004, Science.

[26]  V. Carey,et al.  Mixed-Effects Models in S and S-Plus , 2001 .

[27]  D. Bates,et al.  Mixed-Effects Models in S and S-PLUS , 2001 .

[28]  G. Likens,et al.  Patterns of nitrate loss from a chronosequence of clear-cut watersheds , 1995 .

[29]  J. Didon-Lescot,et al.  Effect of the clearfelling on the water quality: Example of a spruce forest on a small catchment in France , 1993 .

[30]  P. Vitousek,et al.  Nitrate Losses from Disturbed Ecosystems , 1979, Science.

[31]  G. Likens,et al.  Recovery of a deforested ecosystem. , 1978, Science.

[32]  Gene E. Likens,et al.  Effects of Forest Cutting and Herbicide Treatment on Nutrient Budgets in the Hubbard Brook Watershed-Ecosystem , 1970 .

[33]  Kirsten Stephan,et al.  Effects of spring prescribed burning and wildfires on watershed nitrogen dynamics of central Idaho headwater areas , 2012 .

[34]  J. Müller,et al.  Diversity of wood-decaying fungi under different disturbance regimes—a case study from spruce mountain forests , 2011, Biodiversity and Conservation.

[35]  J. Müller,et al.  The BIOKLIM Project: Biodiversity Research between Climate Change and Wilding in a temperate montane forest - The conceptual framework , 2009 .

[36]  Roberto Canullo,et al.  Manual on methods and criteria for harmonized sampling, assessment, monitoring and analysis of the effects of air pollution on forests. Part VIII, Assessment of Ground Vegetation. Expert Panel on Ground Vegetation Assessment, UN-ECE, ICP-Forests. , 2007 .