Ecological thresholds in herb communities for the management of suburban fragmented forests

Are the ancient forests of the Eastern Po Plain large enough for a long term conservation of herbaceous nemoral species?

“…Even if there is a certain ambiguity on the definition of old-growth forests (Gilg 2004;Spies 2004), which are often considered as synonymous of ''natural'' forests, according to Peterken (1996) we refer to old-growth forests as undisturbed ecosystems, unaffected by relevant human impact since long time. Many studies have been carried out in Italy both in Mediterranean (Piovesan et al 2005;Burrascano et al 2008;Blasi et al 2010;Marchetti et al 2010) and Temperate context (Motta 2002;Burrascano et al 2009;Digiovinazzo et al 2010) and actually all of them refer to high natural aspects. On the contrary, the sites investigated in the present study have been traditionally used for timber production (Susmel 1994;Zanetti 1985), subjected to coppicing and even clear cutting during the Second World War, but the land cover type has never been changed.…”

Threshold change in forest understory vegetation as a result of selective fuelwood extraction in Nairobi, Kenya

“…Substantial loss of ecosystem function and biodiversity can occur when thresholds are surpassed, while change in the opposite direction can lead to recovery if threshold changes are reversible (Bestelmeyer, 2006). Such notion is changing the conceptual underpinning of habitat management (Suding and Hobbs, 2009) and applications to forest management are increasing (Craig and Macdonald, 2009;Gooden et al, 2009;Digiovinazzo et al, 2010).…”

“…Identification of pattern threshold has often been based on changes in floristic composition, plant growth form, and species diversity along the prevailing disturbance gradient (Sasaki et al, 2008;Craig and Macdonald, 2009;Digiovinazzo et al, 2010). Additionally, in some forest ecosystems, invasive alien plants (IAPs) have played a deterministic role in threshold response (Gooden et al, 2009).…”

Fragmentation of hardwood floodplain forests — how does it affect species composition?

“…Some have suggested that the effect of habitat fragmentation on plant diversity is linearly negative (Laurance et al 2001), positive (Dolt et al 2005) or non-linearly negative (Digiovinazzo et al 2010). …”