Forest management in an uncertain future: The role of tree diversity

Forest management in an uncertain future: The role of tree diversity Prof Dr Andreas Rigling and Dr Valentina Vitali highlight the importance of tree diversity for enhancing forest resilience in an uncertain future. The famous quote by Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize winner for physics, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”, applies directly to forests in times of global change, their development, and the ecosystem services they provide. Forests face unprecedented rates of change, creating considerable uncertainty in all aspects of forest development and management. Since forestry decisions are made with time horizons of decades to centuries, the challenge of predicting future climatic and ecological conditions is immense.