ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. For. Glob. Change
Sec. Forest Management
This article is part of the Research TopicForest Hazard Mitigation and Ecosystem Function Restoration in the Era of Climate Crisis: Safeguarding Ecological Integrity for Sustainable Forest ManagementView all articles
Biodiversity primarily drives the spatial stability of ecosystem functions and multifunctionality, along with abiotic factors and stand age across South Korean forests
Provisionally accepted
- 1Kookmin University, Seongbuk-gu, Republic of Korea
- 2Kookmin University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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Maintaining the stability of forest ecosystem functions and mitigating climate-driven declines in ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF) are key goals in modern forest management. This study assessed the spatial stability of 11 forest ecosystem functions and overall multifunctionality using data from 2,859 natural forest plots in the 7th National Forest Inventory of South Korea. We examined how biotic factors (species, functional, and structural diversity), abiotic factors (elevation and aridity), and stand age influence the spatial stability of EMF and individual functions. Variance partitioning and regression analyses were used to quantify the relative importance of these factors. The results showed that diversity-related biotic factors—such as biodiversity and structural diversity—primarily explained the spatial stability of most functions and multifunctionality, generally with positive effects. However, these relationships were not consistent across all functions. Among abiotic factors, higher elevations and lower water stress (i.e., greater aridity) tended to enhance stability. Community-weighted means of functional traits also affected EMF, with maximum tree height being closely associated with multifunctionality and its stability. These findings highlight the need for tailored management strategies to enhance EMF and specific ecosystem functions, emphasizing that biodiversity alone does not necessarily ensure stability across all functions.
Keywords: Biodiversity, ecosystem functions, Ecosystem multifunctionality, Spatial stability, Stand age, Water stress
Received: 06 Oct 2025; Accepted: 28 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lee and Lee. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chang-Bae Lee, kecolee@kookmin.ac.kr
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