Vegetation changes in meso- and eutrophic submontane oak–hornbeam forests under long-term high forest management

2015 ◽  
Vol 354 ◽  
pp. 206-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomasz Durak ◽  
Roma Durak
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konsta Happonen ◽  
Lauralotta Muurinen ◽  
Risto Virtanen ◽  
Eero Kaakinen ◽  
John-Arvid Grytnes ◽  
...  

AbstractAimLand use is the foremost cause of global biodiversity decline, but species do not respond equally to land-use practices. Instead, responses are mediated by species traits, but long-term data on the trait-mediated effects of land-use on communities is scarce. Here we study how forest understory communities have been affected by common land-use practices during 4–5 decades, and whether changes in diversity are related to changes in functional composition.LocationFinlandTime period1968–2019Major taxa studiedVascular plantsMethodsWe resurveyed 245 semi-permanent vegetation plots in boreal herb-rich forest understories, and used path analysis to relate changes in diversity, species composition, average plant size, and leaf economic traits to reindeer husbandry, forest management intensity, and changes in canopy cover and canopy traits.ResultsForestry affected understories indirectly by increasing canopy shading, which increased understory SLA and decreased LDMC over the study period. Intensive management also decreased species richness and increased turnover. In areas with reindeer husbandry, reindeer density had increased along with understory evenness and diversity. Areas with reindeer husbandry also had lower temporal community turnover. Plant height had increased in areas without reindeer, but this trend was suppressed or even reversed within the reindeer herding area.Main conclusionsFunctional traits are useful in connecting vegetation changes to the mechanisms that drive them. Forest management causes directional selection on light-interception traits by altering shade. Reindeer husbandry seems to buffer forest understory communities against compositional changes by altering selection on whole-plant traits such as size. These trait-dependent selection effects could inform which species benefit and which suffer from different types of land use, and point to the potential usefulness of large herbivores as tools for managing vegetation changes under global change.


1970 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
H Meilby ◽  
L Puri ◽  
M Christensen ◽  
S Rayamajhi

To monitor the development of four community-managed forests, networks of permanent sample plots were established in 2005 at sites in Chitwan, Kaski and Mustang Districts, Nepal. This research note documents the procedures used when preparing for establishment of the plot networks, evaluates the applied stratification of the forest on the basis of data gathered in pilot surveys conducted in the early 2005, and provides a discussion on the implications of the choices made. Key words: Community-managed forests; permanent sample plots; stratification; allocation; estimates Banko Janakari Vol.16(2) 2006 pp.3-11


2021 ◽  
Vol 494 ◽  
pp. 119312
Author(s):  
C. Deval ◽  
E.S. Brooks ◽  
J.A. Gravelle ◽  
T.E. Link ◽  
M. Dobre ◽  
...  

1981 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 233-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. H. Hall

This paper describes an approach to forest management decision-making. Acknowledging both objective and subjective elements, the approach offers a methodology to encourage more creative design in forest planning. It uses the descriptive capabilities of simulation modeling in tandem with the prescriptive capabilities of graphical evaluation techniques, to facilitate the use and interpretation of technical forestry information in decision-making problems. It emphasizes a need for an overview of long-term resource behavior as a prerequisite to, and a framework for, forest planning.


2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 883-894 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON J. GROVE ◽  
STEPHEN M. TURTON ◽  
DANNY T. SIEGENTHALER

Tropical Cyclone ‘Rona’ crossed the coast of the Daintree lowlands of northeastern Australia in 1999. This study reports on its impact on forest canopy openness at six lowland rain forest sites with contrasting management histories (old-growth, selectively logged and regrowth). Percentage canopy openness was calculated from individual hemispherical photographs taken from marked points below the forest canopy at nine plots per site 3–4 mo before the cyclone, and at the same points a month afterwards. Before the cyclone, when nine sites were visited, canopy openness in old-growth and logged sites was similar, but significantly higher in regrowth forest. After the cyclone, all six revisited sites showed an increase in canopy openness, but the increase was very patchy amongst plots and sites and varied from insignificant to severe. The most severely impacted site was an old-growth one, the least impacted a logged one. Although proneness to impact was apparently related to forest management history (old-growth being the most impacted), underlying local topography may have had an equally strong influence in this case. It was concluded that the likelihood of severe impact may be determined at the landscape-scale by the interaction of anthropogenic with meteorological, physiographic and biotic factors. In the long term, such interactions may caution against pursuing forest management in cyclone-prone areas.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomaž Šturm ◽  
Tomaž Podobnikar

The aim of this study is to develop a long-term forest fire occurrence probability model in the Karst forest management area of Slovenia. The target area has the greatest forest fire occurrence rates and the largest burned areas in the country. To discover how the forest stand characteristics influence forest fire occurrence, we developed a long-term linear regression model. The geographically weighted regression method was applied to build the model, using forest management plans and land-based datasets as explanatory variables and a past forest fire activity dataset as a predicted variable. The land-based dataset was used to represent human activity as a key component in fire occurrence. Variables representing the natural and the anthropogenic environment used in the model explained 39% of past forest fire occurrences and predicted areas with the highest likelihood of forest fire occurrence. The results show that forest fire occurrence probability in a stand increases with lower wood stock, lower species diversity and lower thickness diversity, and in stands dominated by conifer trees under normal canopy closure. These forests stand characteristics are planned to be used in forest management and silviculture planning to reduce fire damage in Slovenian forests.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Xu ◽  
Yongjun Shi ◽  
Wanjie Lv ◽  
Zhengwen Niu ◽  
Ning Yuan ◽  
...  

<p>Forest ecosystem has a high carbon sequestration capacity and plays a crucial role in maintaining global carbon balance and climate change. Phytolith-occluded carbon (PhytOC), a promising long-term biogeochemical carbon sequestration mechanism, has attracted more attentions in the global carbon cycle and the regulation of atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub>. Therefore, it is of practical significance to investigate the PhytOC accumulation in forest ecosystems. Previous studies have mostly focused on the estimation of the content and storage of PhytOC, while there were still few studies on how the management practices affect the PhytOC content. Here, this study focused on the effects of four management practices (compound fertilization, silicon fertilization, cut and control) on the increase of phytolith and PhytOC in Moso bamboo forests. We found that silicon fertilization had a greater potential to significantly promote the capacity of carbon sequestration in Moso bamboo forests. this finding positively corresponds recent studies that the application of silicon fertilizers (e.g., biochar) increase the Si uptake<strong><sup>1</sup></strong> to promote phytolith accumulation and its PhytOC sequestration in the plant-soil system<strong><sup>2</sup></strong>. Of course, the above-mentioned document<strong><sup>2</sup></strong> also had their own shortcomings, i.e., the experimental research time was not long, lacking long-term follow-up trial and the bamboo forest parts were also limited, so that the test results lack certain reliability. We have set up a long-term experiment plot to study the effects of silicon fertilizer on the formation and stability of phytolith and PhytOC in Moso bamboo forests. But anyway, different forest management practices, especially the application of high-efficiency silicon-rich fertilizers<strong><sup>1</sup></strong>, may be an effective way to increase the phytolith and PhytOC storage in forest ecosystems, and thereby improve the long-term CO<sub>2 </sub>sequestration capacity of forest ecosystems. Research in this study provides a good "forest plan" to achieve their national voluntary emission reduction commitments and achieves carbon neutrality goals for all over the world.</p><p>Refences:</p><p><sup>1</sup>Li et al., 2019. Plant and soil, 438(1-2), pp.187-203.</p><p><sup>2</sup>Huang et al., 2020, Science of The Total Environment, 715, p.136846.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akhtar-E Ekram ◽  
Rebecca Hamilton ◽  
Matthew Campbell ◽  
Chloe Plett ◽  
Sureyya Kose ◽  
...  

<p>Several studies have shown that ancient plant-derived DNA can be extracted and sequenced from lake sediments and complement the analysis of fossil pollen in reconstructing past vegetation responses to climate variability and anthropogenic perturbations. The majority of such studies have been performed on Holocene lakes located in cooler higher latitude regions whereas similar studies from tropical lakes are limited. Here, we report a ~1 Ma record of vegetation changes in tropical Lake Towuti (Sulawesi, Indonesia) through parallel pollen and sedimentary ancient DNA (sed aDNA) analysis. Lake Towuti is located in a vegetation biodiversity hotspot and in the centre of the Indo Pacific Warm Pool (IPWP), which comprises the world’s warmest oceanic waters and influences globally important climate systems. In the context of global change, the surface area of the IPWP is rapidly expanding. Lake Towuti is of particular interest since it provides a unique opportunity to obtain a long-term record of IPWP-controlled climate-ecosystem interactions and ecosystem resilience. Stratigraphic analysis of fossil pollen vs. sequencing of preserved chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) signatures (i.e., trnL-P6) both revealed that Lake Towuti experienced significant vegetation changes during the transition from a landscape initially characterized by active river channels, shallow lakes and swamps into a permanent lake ~1 Ma ago. Both proxies marked a predominance of trees or shrubs during most of Lake Towuti’s history, but the trnL-P6 barcoding approach revealed a much higher relative abundance of remote montane conifers, which likely have produced large amounts of chloroplast-rich airborne pollen that were subsequently buried in the sedimentary record. The pollen record showed a higher relative abundance of evergreen tropical forest vegetation, whereas the trnL-P6 record revealed a higher relative abundance of predominantly wetland herbs that must have entered the lake from the local catchment in the form of chloroplast-rich litter. Furthermore, the sedimentary record was rich in presumably wind-derived chloroplast-lacking fern spores, while fern trnL-P6 was only sporadically detected. Only through trnL-P6 barcoding, fern-derived biomass in the sedimentary record could be identified as Schizaeaceae, which is a primitive tropical grass-like fern family often associated with swampy or moist soils. Unlike pollen, trnL-P6 could identify grasses at clade and subfamily levels and confirmed that the majority of grasses in the area represented wet climate C3 grasses or those that can switch between C3 and C4 carbon fixation pathways, whereas grasses that can only perform C4 carbon fixation, indicative of dry climate conditions, were not detected. At least for sediments deposited prior to the Last Glacial Maximum, neither pollen nor trnL-P6 revealed significant vegetation changes between alternating layers of lacustrine green and red sideritic clays thought to have been deposited during orbitally controlled wetter vs. drier periods. These preliminary results suggest that vegetation in this tropical biodiversity hotspot may be relatively resilient to long-term variations in IPWP hydrology.</p>


Author(s):  
James R. Gosz

Through the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, I have learned to appreciate the complexity of environmental dynamics when they are analyzed at multiple time and space scales. My experience as a postdoctoral fellow and in the LTER program facilitated much of my understanding of interdisciplinary research because of access to multiple disciplinary approaches and accumulation of long-term and multiple- scale information. My teaching of science benefited through recognition of the need for a combination of a deep understanding of each discipline’s role in an issue (reductionist approach) and the collaborative need for integrating disciplines to fully understand complexity. No single discipline can answer the complexity in an environmental question. I have improved my communication with the public through the combination of teaching and research reporting. The challenge is to develop the information in ways that can be communicated: free of scientific jargon, containing only essential data, and developed in scenarios that are recognized as real-life situations. The public has many forms and levels of understanding—there are K to gray and ordinary citizens and policy-makers; consequently, communication needs to be targeted appropriately. I value the role of collaboration; there is tremendous satisfaction and reward from working in teams that can accomplish so much more than can an individual. This collaboration requires compromise, interaction, and time, but those that strive for this approach to science are well recognized. I am fortunate in being in positions that have created opportunities for sustaining a long career in stimulating interdisciplinary and collaborative science. I had a traditional forest management and soil science education (Michigan Technological University and the University of Idaho). However, my entrée into ecosystem science was set up by my very valuable postdoctoral fellowship at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest under the guidance of Gene Likens from 1969 to 1970, before the formation of the LTER program. The Hubbard Brook experience, quite literally, educated me about systems thinking, with the watershed approach to understanding integrated responses from complex, multifactor interactions and influences of forest management as disturbances.


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