Retention forestry implies that biological legacies like dead and living trees are deliberately selected and retained beyond harvesting cycles to benefit biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. This model has been applied for several decades in even-aged, clearcutting (CC) systems but less so in uneven-aged, continuous-cover forestry (CCF). We provide an overview of retention in CCF in temperate regions of Europe, currently largely focused on habitat trees and dead wood. The relevance of current meta-analyses and many other studies on retention in CC is limited since they emphasize larger patches in open surroundings. Therefore, we reflect here on the ecological foundations and socio-economic frameworks of retention approaches in CCF, and highlight several areas with development potential for the future. Conclusions from this perspective paper, based on both research and current practice on several continents, although highlighting Europe, are also relevant to other temperate regions of the world using continuous-cover forest management approaches.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-019-01190-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Managed forests are a key component of strategies aimed at tackling the climate and biodiversity crises. Tapping this potential requires a better understanding of the complex, simultaneous effects of forest management on biodiversity, carbon stocks and productivity. Here, we used data of 135 one-hectare plots from southwestern Germany to disentangle the relative influence of gradients of management intensity, carbon stocks and forest productivity on different components of forest biodiversity (birds, bats, insects, plants) and tree-related microhabitats. We tested whether the composition of taxonomic groups varies gradually or abruptly along these gradients. The richness of taxonomic groups was rather insensitive to management intensity, carbon stocks and forest productivity. Despite the low explanatory power of the main predictor variables, forest management had the greatest relative influence on richness of insects and tree-related microhabitats, while carbon stocks influenced richness of bats, birds, vascular plants and pooled taxa. Species composition changed relatively abruptly along the management intensity gradient, while changes along carbon and productivity gradients were more gradual. We conclude that moderate increases in forest management intensity and carbon stocks, within the range of variation observed in our study system, might be compatible with biodiversity and climate mitigation objectives in managed forests.

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