article id 552,
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                        Review article
                    
        
                                    
                                    
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                            In Fennoscandia, use of the natural forest as a reference for  restoration and management of forest biodiversity has been widely  accepted. However, limited understanding of the structure and dynamics  of the natural forest has hampered the applications of the natural  variability approach. This is especially the case in areas, where the  natural forests have almost totally vanished. This review was motivated  by the idea that despite these difficulties the essential features of  the natural forest can be reconstructed based on biological archives,  historical documents, research done in adjacent natural areas, and  modeling. First, a conceptual framework for analyzing the relationship  between forest structure, dynamics and biodiversity is presented.  Second, the current understanding of the structure and dynamics of  natural forests at different spatiotemporal scales in boreal  Fennoscandia is reviewed. Third, the implications of this knowledge, and  gaps in knowledge, on research and on practical restoration and  management methods aimed at forest biodiversity conservation are  discussed. In conclusion, naturally dynamic forest landscapes are  complex, multiscaled hierarchical systems. Current forest management  methods create disturbance and successional dynamics that are strongly  scale-limited when compared with the natural forest. To restore some of  the essential characteristics of the natural forest’s multiscale  heterogeneity, diversification of silvicultural and harvesting  treatments, as guided by natural disturbance dynamics, is needed to  produce more variation in disturbance severity, quality, extent, and  repeatability.
                        
                
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                            Kuuluvainen,
                            Department of Forest Ecology, P.O. Box 24, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
                                                        E-mail:
                                                            timo.kuuluvainen@helsinki.fi