Silviculture of Mixed Forests: A European Overview of Current Practices and Challenges

Currently, about 70% of the forest land in Europe is covered by stands composed of two or more tree species. The similar situation can be found outside Europe too. While forest management of monocultures is well described, multispecies forests still need a better understanding to develop appropriate forest practice. Managing mixed forests can be more complex than managing monocultures because of the need to optimize the provision of multiple benefits according to the societal demands including sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. In this chapter we are going to present (1) the most important and well-described tree species combinations found in each participating countries taking biogeographical region in Europe into account, (2) the main management objectives of those mixtures, (3) the silvicultural approaches that are available for the particular mixed-species forests and (4) the main challenges experienced in mixed-species forest management. We synthesized information about management of mixed-species forests based on questionnaires received from both European countries and few countries from outside Europe participating in COST Action ‘EuMIXFOR’. The survey revealed that (i) the main management objective in the analysed mixtures is valuable timber production followed by protection of soil and water and protection of forests against disturbances, (ii) the uniform shelterwood is the most widespread regeneration method followed by the clear-cutting and the irregular shelterwood system, (iii) the crown thinning followed by low thinning is the most frequent thinning method, and (iv) the main challenge of management is high game pressure and the lack of management rules covering mixture growth and taking into account both species functional traits and site conditions.