TY - THES A1 - Kortmann, Mareike T1 - Biodiversity and recreation – Optimizing tourism and forest management in forests affected by bark beetles T1 - Biodiversität und Erholungsfunktionen – Optimierung von Tourismus- und Waldmanagement in Borkenkäferwäldern N2 - Forests are multi-functional system, which have to fulfil different objectives at the same time. The main functions include the production of wood, storage of carbon, the promotion of biological diversity and the provision of recreational space. Yet, global forests are affected by large and intense natural disturbances, like bark beetle infestations. While natural disturbances threaten wood production and are perceived as ‘catastrophe’ diminishing recreational value, biodiversity can benefit from the disturbance-induced changes in forest structures. This trade-off poses a dilemma to managers of bark beetle affected stands, particularly in protected areas designated to both nature conservation and recreation. Forest landscapes need a sustainable management concept aligning these different objectives. In order to support this goal with scientific knowledge, the aim of this work is to analyse ecological and social effects along a gradient of different disturbance severities. In this context, I studied the effects of a disturbance severity gradient on the diversity of different taxonomic groups including vascular plants, mosses, lichens, fungi, arthropods and birds in five national parks in Central Europe. To analyse the recreational value of the landscape I conducted visitor surveys in the same study areas in which the biodiversity surveys were performed. To analyse possible psychological or demographic effects on preferences for certain disturbance intensities, an additional online survey was carried out. N2 - Wälder müssen unterschiedliche Zielsetzungen zur gleichen Zeit erfüllen. Zu den wichtigsten Zielsetzungen zählen Produktion von Holz, Speicherung von CO2, die Förderung der biologischen Vielfalt und die Bereitstellung von Erholungsgebieten. Wälder sind jedoch global von intensiven natürlichen Störungen wie Borkenkäferbefall betroffen. Während natürliche Störungen die Holzproduktion bedrohen und von der Bevölkerung als „Katastrophe“ wahrgenommen werden, die den Erholungswert verringert, kann die biologische Vielfalt von den störungsbedingten Veränderungen der Waldstrukturen profitieren. Dieser Kompromiss stellt die Manager der von Borkenkäfern betroffenen Bestände vor ein Dilemma, insbesondere in Schutzgebieten, die sowohl dem Naturschutz als auch der Erholung gewidmet sind, und fordert ein nachhaltiges Bewirtschaftungskonzept, das diese unterschiedlichen Ziele in Einklang bringt. Um diese Vorhaben durch wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse zu unterstützen, ist das Ziel dieser Arbeit, ökologische und soziale Effekte entlang eines Gradienten verschiedener Störungsintensitätsgrade zu analysieren. In diesem Zusammenhang wurden die Auswirkungen verschiedener Störungsintensitäten auf die Biodiversität verschiedener taxonomischer Gruppen, einschließlich Gefäßpflanzen, Moosen, Flechten, Pilzen, Arthropoden und Vögeln untersucht. Außerdem Befragungen von Nationalpark Besuchern durchgeführt, um den Erholungswert der Landschaft zu analysieren. Um mögliche psychologische oder demografische Auswirkungen auf Präferenzen für bestimmte Störungsintensitäten zu analysieren, wurde zudem eine Online-Umfrage durchgeführt. KW - Borkenkäfer KW - Nationalpark KW - Biodiversität KW - natural disturbance KW - nature conservation KW - national park KW - biodiversity KW - recreation Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-240317 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kortmann, Mareike A1 - Roth, Nicolas A1 - Buse, Jörn A1 - Hilszczański, Jacek A1 - Jaworski, Tomasz A1 - Morinière, Jérôme A1 - Seidl, Rupert A1 - Thorn, Simon A1 - Müller, Jörg C. T1 - Arthropod dark taxa provide new insights into diversity responses to bark beetle infestations JF - Ecological Applications N2 - Natural disturbances are increasing around the globe, also impacting protected areas. Although previous studies have indicated that natural disturbances result in mainly positive effects on biodiversity, these analyses mostly focused on a few well established taxonomic groups, and thus uncertainty remains regarding the comprehensive impact of natural disturbances on biodiversity. Using Malaise traps and meta‐barcoding, we studied a broad range of arthropod taxa, including dark and cryptic taxa, along a gradient of bark beetle disturbance severities in five European national parks. We identified order‐level community thresholds of disturbance severity and classified barcode index numbers (BINs; a cluster system for DNA sequences, where each cluster corresponds to a species) as negative or positive disturbance indicators. Negative indicator BINs decreased above thresholds of low to medium disturbance severity (20%–30% of trees killed), whereas positive indicator BINs benefited from high disturbance severity (76%–98%). BINs allocated to a species name contained nearly as many positive as negative disturbance indicators, but dark and cryptic taxa, particularly Diptera and Hymenoptera in our data, contained higher numbers of negative disturbance indicator BINs. Analyses of changes in the richness of BINs showed variable responses of arthropods to disturbance severity at lower taxonomic levels, whereas no significant signal was detected at the order level due to the compensatory responses of the underlying taxa. We conclude that the analyses of dark taxa can offer new insights into biodiversity responses to disturbances. Our results suggest considerable potential for forest management to foster arthropod diversity, for example by maintaining both closed‐canopy forests (>70% cover) and open forests (<30% cover) on the landscape. KW - arthropods KW - biodiversity KW - conservation KW - metabarcoding KW - national park KW - natural disturbance KW - threshold indicator taxa analysis Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-276392 VL - 32 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kortmann, Mareike A1 - Angelstam, Per A1 - Mayer, Marius A1 - Leibl, Franz A1 - Reichert, Jessica A1 - Thorn, Christine A1 - Thorn, Simon T1 - Disturbance severity and human–nature relationships: A new approach to analyze people’s well-being along a bark beetle infestation gradient JF - Forests N2 - Contact to nature and greenspace is important for emotional well-being and can promote human health. Forest landscapes provide such access to greenspace, especially in protected areas. However, forested protected areas are impacted by natural disturbances such as bark beetle infestations. On the one hand, such disturbances have positive impacts on ecological processes and biodiversity. On the other hand, they have allegedly negative impacts on the recreational value of a landscape. Limited knowledge about the public’s perception of forests subject to natural disturbances still hampers forest management to balance ecological functions and visitors’ recreational experience. Thus, our aim was to determine how attitudes towards nature influence the personal well-being in a naturally disturbed landscape. We investigated self-reported well-being and attitudes towards nature in a standardized questionnaire-based survey of 1008 German inhabitants in an experimentally adapted landscape visualization. Self-reported well-being was generally highest in landscapes with relatively few bark-beetle-killed trees. This was especially the case for people who felt included with nature and preferred an appreciative use or preservation of nature. Conversely, people who had previously visited a national park with visible bark beetle infestations rated their personal well-being highest in landscapes with larger proportions of beetle-killed trees. Our results indicate that it is necessary to analyze people’s knowledge about and relations to forest landscapes as well as concepts of nature conservation, natural landscapes, and biodiversity to gain a better understanding of people’s perceptions of natural disturbances. KW - bark beetle disturbance KW - major environmental values KW - well-being KW - inclusion of nature in one’s self KW - national park Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-297429 SN - 1999-4907 VL - 13 IS - 11 ER -