Including biodiversity indicators into forest planning is increasing in importance as it is a supporting service for other ecosystem services. To forecast biodiversity potential, forest planners use models that simulate forest growth and other biological and ecological processes. As models are simplifications of reality, they may ignore components of biodiversity’s multi-scales and multi-facets.
To address this issue, we explored if current models used in forest planning can characterize biodiversity in a similar way as it is defined in ecology. We performed a narrative review of ecological papers to identify the main aspects of biodiversity defined in ecology. We then reviewed 64 forest planning articles to identify the indicators they use and what aspects of biodiversity they represent. We compared the aspects identified in ecology and forest planning to evaluate the discrepancies between the two fields and suggest improvements for future biodiversity studies in forest planning.
