Traditional management of deciduous forests in Western Europe (coppice and coppice-with-standards) has been abondoned or been replaced by more modern forestry practices in most forests. Consequently most forests today are in a transition phase. The main goal of this project is to investigate the response of the plant species in the field layer on these changes in disturbance and disturbance regimes. Both old data (e.g. historic lists of species, data from (semi-)permanent plots) and new data will be used to understand these changes. The latter will be collected from a field experiment which will introduce plant species (both seeds and adults) in different disturbance combinations. The results will be integrated in models which will be used to simulate the longterm effects on plant populations.