Environment and density-dependency explain the fine-scale aggregation of tree recruits before and after thinning in a mixed forest of Southern Europe
Fecha
2022Versión
Acceso abierto / Sarbide irekia
Tipo
Artículo / Artikulua
Versión
Versión publicada / Argitaratu den bertsioa
Impacto
|
10.7717/peerj.13892
Resumen
Thinning in forest management primarily reduces the density of trees and alters the
patchiness and spatial complexity of environmental factors and individual interactions
between plant recruits. At fine spatial scales, little is known about the relative weight
of ecological processes affecting tree regeneration before and after thinning events.
Here we studied the density and aggregation of t ...
[++]
Thinning in forest management primarily reduces the density of trees and alters the
patchiness and spatial complexity of environmental factors and individual interactions
between plant recruits. At fine spatial scales, little is known about the relative weight
of ecological processes affecting tree regeneration before and after thinning events.
Here we studied the density and aggregation of tree recruits in fully-mapped plots
located in mixed forests in Northern Iberian Peninsula (Southern Europe) for over
four years, which comprises one year before and three years after a thinning event.
We applied spatial point-pattern analyses to examine (a) the aggregation of recruits,
and their association with trees and (b) the relative effect of both environmental
(i.e., the patchiness of the local environment) and density-dependent factors (i.e., the
aggregation of trees and/or recruits) to predict the density, aggregation, and survival
of recruits. We found, in thinning plots, that recruits were less dense, their aggregation
pattern was more heterogeneous, were distributed randomly in respect of trees and
their survival was almost unaffected by the tree proximity. By contrast, recruits in
control plots were denser, were only aggregated at distances lower than 1.0 m, were
closer to trees, and such closer distance to trees affected negatively in their survival.
Independently of the treatment, the aggregation of recruits was chiefly determined
by the density-dependent factors at less than 1.0 m and environmental factors at
distances beyond that proximity. Overall, our results suggest that thinning affected
the aggregation of recruits at two spatial scales: (a) by favoring the tree-recruit and
recruit-recruit facilitation at less than 1.0 m and (b) by modifying spatial heterogeneity
of the environment at distances beyond that proximity. [--]
Materias
Mixed-forests,
Point-pattern analysis,
Tree-recruit competition,
Local scales,
Biotic interactions
Editor
PeerJ
Publicado en
PeerJ 10:e13892
Departamento
Universidad Pública de Navarra. Departamento de Ciencias /
Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa. Zientziak Saila /
Universidad Pública de Navarra/Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa. Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Applied Biology - IMAB
Versión del editor
Entidades Financiadoras
This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness
(AGL2006-08288 and AGL2009-11287). Javier Rodríguez-Pérez was funded from the ‘'la
Caixa’ and 'Caja Navarra' Foundation, under agreement LCF/PR/PR13/51080004 in the
framework of UPNA’s 'Captación de Talento' program.