Bryophyte community responses 20 years after forest management in boreal mixedwood forest

Sustainable forest management relies on a diversity of harvesting practices to conserve the variety of stand structures and compositions found in natural forests. Extensive use of clearcuts can homogenize stand structure by removing all the canopy, damage forest soils and destroy older downed woody debris already present within stands. In contrast partial cuts maintain some standing overstory and conserve certain biological legacies like large live trees as well as standing and downed dead wood, and thus should better conserve biodiversity. However, given the large number of species potentially affected by harvest operations, balancing harvesting intensity and conservation of biodiversity requires a clear understanding of habitat requirements of resident organisms and species conservation post-harvest. We examined the impacts of increasing intensities of stem removal (33%, 40%, 66% and 100%) 20 years after harvest on bryophyte communities in three stand types common in the succession sequences of Eastern boreal mixedwood forests that were dominated by trembling aspen, mixedwood and conifers. While many generalist and common forest species were shared among all harvesting levels and forest types, more specialized species like liverworts differed strongly between uncut and clearcut stands and less between uncut and partial cut stands. Bryophyte species in hardwood dominated stands tolerated more fluctuations in environmental conditions than species in mixed stands. We were unable to find habitat specialists typically associated with coniferous stands and may be related to prior outbreaks of spruce budworm that occurred 30 years ago. Our results highlight how harvest intensity and forest stand type interact to affect bryophytes and how intact stands may be required to conserve many species that are sensitive to any degree of harvesting.