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Table 2 Aspects of structural diversity and references for publications, in which the ecological rationale for the relevance of the different aspects of structural diversity for forest biodiversity are provided; see also Sabatini et al. (2015). The right column refers to the number of variables that can be derived from the National Forest Inventory in relation to this aspect. The complete list of these 52 variables is provided in the Additional file 3. The aspects 'litter layer, 'microhabitats, 'tree spacing' and 'epiphytes and organisms on deadwood' could not be considered in this analysis because they were not sampled by the NFI. Some ‘microhabitats’ were only added to sampling during NFI2012, so they could not be taken into account for this work

From: Quantifying forest structural diversity based on large-scale inventory data: a new approach to support biodiversity monitoring

Aspect of structural diversity

Acronym

Authors

Number of variables

Uneven-agedness

UA

Keeton (2006); Hatanaka et al. (2011)

7

Growing stock

GS

Houghton (2005); Norris et al. (2012); Hoover et al. (2012)

7

Compositional heterogeneity

CH

Barbier et al. (2008); Barbier et al. (2009); Burrascano et al. (2011); Hatanaka et al. (2011)

5

Vertical heterogeneity

VH

Staudhammer and LeMay (2001); Hao et al. (2007); Burrascano et al. (2013)

3

Large living trees

LLT

Nilsson et al. (2002); Brunialti et al. (2010); Persiani et al. (2010)

3

Deadwood standing

DW st

Brunialti et al. (2010); Hatanaka et al. (2011)

5

Deadwood downed

DW d

Castagneri et al. (2010); Lassauce et al. (2011); Zotti et al. (2013)

8

Deadwood decay classes

DW DC

Burrascano et al. (2008); Lassauce et al. (2011); Lombardi et al. (2011)

2

Bark diversity

BD

Bhadra et al. (2008); MacFarlane and Luo (2009); Michel et al. (2011)

1

Diversity of flowering and fruiting trees

FD

Singh and Kushwaha (2005)

1

Regeneration

REG

Hello (1985); Boyden et al. (2005); Müller et al. (2008)

10

Litter layer

LL

Barnett et al. (1978); Newsome and Catling (1979); Gilmore (1985) (for habitats of birds); Watson et al. (2001)

0

Microhabitats

MH

Dueser and Shugart (1978); Winter and Möller (2008); Michel et al. (2011); Bütler et al. (2013)

0

Tree spacing

TS

Spies and Franklin (1991); Pretzsch (1997); Acker et al. (1998); Bachofen and Zingg (2001)

0

Epiphytes and organisms on deadwood (lichen, mosses, fungi)

DW G

Humphrey et al. (2002); Blaser et al. (2013); Dittrich et al. (2014); Hoppe et al. (2016)

0