LAUSR

There is broad consensus on restoration of native woodlands in places where intensive forestry is nowadays not profitable. However, this consensus is lost when stakeholders need to implement forest management practices as restoration tool, especially because there is a substantial lack of empirical evidence about its feasibility. In this context, we assess the impact of two different harvest treatments on understorey plant species composition of Pinus radiata plantations as tools to recover native woodland vegetation in northern Iberian Peninsula. Here, common clear-cut treatment and restoration-clear-cut where only pine trees were removed (i.e. reducing the disturbance effect over understorey vegetation) were compared against understorey plant species composition of young and old plantations and restored tracks. The aim was to identify which treatment is more suitable to recover native woodland vegetation. The results reveal that both clear-cuts maintained species composition plus important understorey native species, some of them being restoration targets. However, both clear-cuts showed diversity reductions compared with old plantations, although there were not apparent retention effects on compositional change towards native communities at least two years after harvest. It seems that the remaining vegetation established by natural succession after both clear-cut treatments could be used to achieve initial restoration objectives for some native tree and understorey plant species at relatively low costs. In any case, it would be interesting to implement supplementary management measures to accelerate this conversion, such as invasive species elimination or target species seeding, to maintain local biodiversity and introduce native woodland species not present in the area.