A review of long-term experiments with species mixtures in Great Britain

Abstract

The establishment of species mixtures is considered by many to be a good strategy for ensuring that production forests can continue to provide valuable ecosystem services in the face of emerging biotic and abiotic threats to forest stability. In Great Britain (GB), there has been no attempt to complete a systematic review of all the longterm experiments with species mixtures. This paper aimed to determine to what extent GB-based experiments with species mixtures indicate that forest stands containing mixtures are beneficial for growth, yield, resilience and biodiversity, compared with single species stands. Our results show that a high proportion of studies reviewed ocused on ‘nurse’ mixtures. Whilst many reported positive results for productivity, there were also many with negative or mixed results for the benefits of mixtures. This review has also highlighted some notable gaps in our knowledge, including: the beneficial effects species mixtures may have on resilience, trials under operational conditions, and the economic implications of mixtures. The conclusion of the review is that greater efforts should be made to establish long-term experiments with species mixtures across various spatial and temporal gradients, creating a useful resource for the forestry sector, and a validation tool for the development of future models.

Published in

Quarterly Journal of Forestry
2025, volume: 119, number: 1, pages: 20-28

SLU Authors

• Parry, Jacob

  • Department of Forest Resource Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/140093