Small forest patches, smaller than 10 ha, are very common in many European landscapes and may represent a significant amount of wood available for logging, but also a support of important parts of biodiversity and of many ecosystem services. Few is known about the status of these quantities, because of the difficulty to sample such small habitats. In this presentation, we measured the amount of wood available, according to several classes of quality, in a sample of very small forest patches in southwestern France. In the same places, plant diversity and a set of related ecosystem services were also measured. The results showed a huge variability between patches regarding the amount of available wood, with some of them with a very dense stock of wood, comparatively with national references. Plant diversity was higher in patches with intermediate level of wood stocks, the lowest richness was in the densest patches, but the plant species were then more typical of large forest flora. It seems that allowing older and bigger trees in small patches could reduce the negative impact of the small size of the patch on plant composition. Few of the other ecosystem services were related to the amount of wood but these complex relationships need more detailed analyses. These preliminary results showed that small forest patches represent a significant amount of wood that may be harvested in the future is the demand continue to increase, but this may have consequences on their conservation value for plants, but apparently not for many other ecosystem services. Management practices are also a factor that need to be considered in the future as it may modify strongly the structure of these forests
