Review Effects of forest management on epiphytic lichens in temperate deciduous forests of Europe – A review Juri Nascimbene a,b,⇑ , Göran Thor c , Pier Luigi Nimis a a Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, via Giorgieri 10, 34100 Trieste, Italy b Natural Sciences Museum of South Tyrol, via Bottai 1, 39100 Bolzano, Italy c Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, P.O. Box 7044, SE-750 07 Uppsala, Sweden article info Article history: Received 29 December 2012 Received in revised form 3 March 2013 Accepted 5 March 2013 Available online 1 April 2013 Keywords: Coppicing Forest age Forestry Lichen conservation Management suggestions Selective cutting abstract This review aims at summarizing literature on epiphytic lichens in relation with forest management in temperate deciduous forests of Europe, including suggestions for mitigating the impact of forestry and stimulating further research. The review is focused on environmental factors that directly depend on, or that are known to interact with forest management, such as tree (and forest) age and size, tree species composition, large scale factors (e.g. climate and air pollution), landscape context, and past forest history. The literature demonstrates the sensitiveness of epiphytic lichens to forestry: forest management, and especially the shelterwood system, is a source of threat for many forest-dwelling lichens. Several studies include explicit recommendations for mitigating the effect of forestry. The main ones are: (a) selective cutting should be preferred to the shelterwood system; (b) the negative effect of the shelterwood system could be mitigated by the extension of the rotation period and by the retention of groups of mature trees at the final harvest; (c) the creation of stands with intermediate canopy openness should be promoted; (d) logs and snags should be retained in production forests; (e) large old trees should be maintained in production forests and some of them left until dead and decomposed (‘‘eternity trees’’); (f) tree species diversity should be maintained in mixed stands; (g) forest fragments around existing species-rich oldgrowth remnants should be maintained, to create a network of set-aside areas; (h) indicator species could be used for a rapid assessment of forest sites worthy of conservation. However, some topics are still scarcely explored, such as the case of (a) coppice forests, (b) the evaluation of the landscape context and forest history, (c) dead wood-dwelling communities and the role of different types of dead wood for lichen conservation, (d) the effects of emerging infectious diseases, and (e) the use of indicator species to assess the conservation importance of forests. Other research approaches, that are still scarcely devel- oped for lichens, may contribute further information for a more comprehensive understanding of the processes that are behind observed patterns of lichen diversity, such in the case of the evaluation of the role of species functional traits in determining the dispersal ability and the response of lichens to environmental factors. Ó 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Contents 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 28 2. Literature search and selection ........................................................................................... 28 3. Results and discussion .................................................................................................. 28 3.1. General overview ................................................................................................ 28 3.2. Management regimes ............................................................................................. 29 3.3. Forest and tree age, tree size ....................................................................................... 33 3.4. Tree species identity and tree species composition ..................................................................... 35 3.5. Large scale factors, landscape context, and past forest history ............................................................ 35 3.6. Perspectives for further research .................................................................................... 36 0378-1127/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2013.03.008 ⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, via Giorgieri 10, 34100 Trieste, Italy. Tel./fax: +39 043942894. E-mail address: junasc@libero.it (J. Nascimbene). Forest Ecology and Management 298 (2013) 27–38 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Forest Ecology and Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foreco