Biodiversity and climate regulating functions of forests: current issues and prospects for research

The problem of assessing the impact of biodiversity on the climate-regulating functions of forests has fundamental character and great importance for sustainable forest management in the context of global climate change. On the one hand, climate changes affect biodiversity, on the other hand, it is biodiversity, as a provider of all ecosystem functions, underlies the mechanisms of adaptation to these changes. This paper aims to discuss scientific questions about the links between biodiversity and climate-regulating functions of forests, and to outline the prospects for these studies. It is shown that studies of the influence of plant and animal species – ecosystem engineers on forest ecosystem’s functioning, including climate-regulating processes and functions, are quite numerous. However, studies of the combined effects of the diversity of biota belonging to different trophic levels and groups on climate-regulating functions of forests of different types/different stages of succession are not carried out. In such studies, it is important to take into account both taxonomic, including genetic, and functional biodiversity as well as structural diversity of forests. Various concepts of forest management taking into account the conservation and restoration of biodiversity are considered. An important aspect of this problem is the assessment and prediction of relationships (synergy or trade-offs) between climate-regulating and other ecosystem functions of forests with different levels of biodiversity functioning in natural conditions and under the combined impact of natural and anthropogenic factors, including climate change, fires, and forestry regimes. It is shown that a promising approach to assessing and predicting the dynamics of relationships between different ecosystem functions of forests is the integration of mathematical models.