Congruence of the spatial pattern of light and understory vegetation in an old-growth, temperate mixed forest

Tinya, Flóra; Odór, Péter

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2016.09.027

Cited by 60 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…The importance of light quantity and heterogeneity for processes at the forest floor is well studied with regard to plant understory diversity and cover (Mӧlder et al, 2008;Thomsen, Svenning, & Balslev, 2005;Tinya, Márialigeti, Király, Németh, & Odor, 2009;Tinya & Ódor, 2016). Increased tree diversity in stands is generally assumed to create a higher heterogeneity of abiotic conditions at the forest floor (Ampoorter et al, 2016;Canham et al, 1994;Dupré et al, 2002;Thomsen et al, 2005) and the resulting higher number of niches in the mixed stand is expected to promote the coexistence of more understory species (Barbier et al, 2008;Levine & HilleRisLambers, 2009;Reich et al, 2012).…”

Section: Impacts For Understory Plantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Light transmittance to the forest floor is spatially and temporally variable and is largely determined by tree species composition, stand density, stand structure, and canopy patterns, including the spatial arrangement of tree crowns and canopy gaps (Martens, Breshears, & Meyer, ; Tinya & Ódor, ). These aspects of forest structure change with developmental stage.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These aspects of forest structure change with developmental stage. Old-growth forests with natural tree fall dynamics often show a high quantity and spatial heterogeneity of light transmittance (Canham, Finzi, Pacala, & Burbank, 1994;Tinya & Ódor, 2016), but only few of the temperate forests are actually in the old-growth stage (Bengtsson, Nilsson, Franc, & Menozzi, 2000;Hannah, Carr, & Lankerani, 1995). The more prevalent mature forests in the understory re-initiation stage generally have continuous closed canopies and light is expected to be primarily determined by species composition under similar stand basal area (Canham et al, 1994;Ligot, Ameztegui, Courbaud, Coll, & Kneeshaw, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How tree species identity and diversity affect light transmittance to the understory in mature temperate forests

Sercu

Baeten

Coillie

et al. 2017

Ecology and Evolution

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Light is a key resource for plant growth and is of particular importance in forest ecosystems, because of the strong vertical structure leading to successive light interception from canopy to forest floor. Tree species differ in the quantity and heterogeneity of light they transmit. We expect decreases in both the quantity and spatial heterogeneity of light transmittance in mixed stands relative to monocultures, due to complementarity effects and niche filling. We tested the degree to which tree species identity and diversity affected, via differences in tree and shrub cover, the spatiotemporal variation in light availability before, during, and after leaf expansion. Plots with different combinations of three tree species with contrasting light transmittance were selected to obtain a diversity gradient from monocultures to three species mixtures. Light transmittance to the forest floor was measured with hemispherical photography. Increased tree diversity led to increased canopy packing and decreased spatial light heterogeneity at the forest floor in all of the time periods. During leaf expansion, light transmittance did differ between the different tree species and timing of leaf expansion might thus be an important source of variation in light regimes for understory plant species. Although light transmittance at the canopy level after leaf expansion was not measured directly, it most likely differed between tree species and decreased in mixtures due to canopy packing. A complementary shrub layer led, however, to similar light levels at the forest floor in all species combinations in our plots. Synthesis. We find that a complementary shrub layer exploits the higher light availability in particular tree species combinations. Resources at the forest floor are thus ultimately determined by the combined effect of the tree and shrub layer. Mixing species led to less heterogeneity in the amount of light, reducing abiotic niche variability.

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Section: Impacts For Understory Plantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How tree species identity and diversity affect light transmittance to the understory in mature temperate forests

Sercu

Baeten

Coillie

et al. 2017

Ecology and Evolution

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“…avoiding erosion and generating suitable microenvironments for other species development (Simonson et al 2014). However, understory plants have heterogeneous composition, structure and distribution patterns, which depend on the overstory species, forest structure, micro-environmental and stand conditions (e.g., Márialigeti et al 2016;Tinya and Ódor 2016). Moreover, understory could provide habitat and resource specificity to sustain rare or exclusive species in the herbaceous layer, which have excellent potential for use as biodiversity indicators (Spyreas and Matthews 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The influence of canopy-layer composition on understory plant diversity in southern temperate forests

et al. 2017

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Background: Understory plants represents the largest component of biodiversity in most forest ecosystems and plays a key role in forest functioning. Despite their importance, the influence of overstory-layer composition on understory plant diversity is relatively poorly understood within deciduous-evergreen broadleaved mixed forests. The aim of this work was to evaluate how tree overstory-layer composition influences on understory-layer diversity in three forest types (monospecific deciduous Nothofagus pumilio (Np), monospecific evergreen Nothofagus betuloides (Nb), and mixed N. pumilio-N. betuloides (M) forests), comparing also between two geographical locations (coast and mountain) to estimate differences at landscape level. Results: We recorded 46 plant species: 4 ferns, 12 monocots, and 30 dicots. Canopy-layer composition influences the herb-layer structure and diversity in two different ways: while mixed forests have greater similarity to evergreen forests in the understory structural features, deciduous and mixed were similar in terms of the specific composition of plant assemblage. Deciduous pure stands were the most diverse, meanwhile evergreen stands were least diverse. Lack of exclusive species of mixed forest could represent a transition where evergreen and deciduous communities meet and integrate. Moreover, landscape has a major influence on the structure, diversity and richness of understory vegetation of pure and mixed forests likely associated to the magnitude and frequency of natural disturbances, where mountain forest not only had highest herb-layer diversity but also more exclusive species. Conclusions: Our study suggests that mixed Nothofagus forest supports coexistence of both pure deciduous and pure evergreen understory plant species and different assemblages in coastal and mountain sites. Maintaining the mixture of canopy patch types within mixed stands will be important for conserving the natural patterns of understory plant composition in southern beech mixed forests.

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“…In our case study, the ecological process of interest is the shaping of the forest understorey community. We selected light transmittance as the driving variable because the understorey composition changes observed in our study regions were strongly related to the light requirement of understorey plants (Hédl et al, 2010;Kopecký et al, 2013) and light availability is one of the main environmental factors controlling the establishment and growth of plant species in forests (Baeten et al, 2009;Thomaes et al, 2013;Tinya and Ódor, 2016). Several studies have observed time lags in vegetation response to understorey light conditions (Dölle and Schmidt, 2009;Thomas et al, 1999), suggesting that past values of light transmittance can be important for current understorey composition.…”

Section: Step 1: Defining Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A general framework for quantifying the effects of land-use history on ecosystem dynamics

Depauw

Landuyt

Perring

et al. 2019

Ecological Indicators

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Land-use legacies are important for explaining present-day ecological patterns and processes. However, an overarching approach to quantify land-use history effects on ecosystem properties is lacking, mainly due to the scarcity of high-quality, complete and detailed data on past land use. We propose a general framework for quantifying the effects of land-use history on ecosystem properties, which is applicable (i) to different ecological processes in various ecosystem types and across trophic levels; and (ii) when historical data are incomplete or of variable quality. The conceptual foundation of our framework is that past land use affects current (and future) ecosystem properties through altering the past values of resources and conditions that are the driving variables of ecosystem responses. We describe and illustrate how Markov chains can be applied to derive past time series of driving variables, and how these time series can be used to improve our understanding of presentday ecosystem properties. We present our framework in a stepwise manner, elucidating its general nature. We illustrate its application through a case study on the importance of past light levels for the contemporary understorey composition of temperate deciduous forest. We found that the understorey shows legacies of past forest management: high past light availability lead to a low proportion of typical forest species in the understorey. Our framework can be a useful tool for quantifying the effect of past land use on ecological patterns and processes and enhancing our understanding of ecosystem dynamics by including legacy effects which have often been ignored.

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Congruence of the spatial pattern of light and understory vegetation in an old-growth, temperate mixed forest

Cited by 60 publications

References 49 publications

How tree species identity and diversity affect light transmittance to the understory in mature temperate forests

How tree species identity and diversity affect light transmittance to the understory in mature temperate forests

The influence of canopy-layer composition on understory plant diversity in southern temperate forests

A general framework for quantifying the effects of land-use history on ecosystem dynamics

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