Effect of silvicultural treatment of individual selection on the horizontal structure of a pine-oak forest in northern Mexico

Abstract

In sustainable forest management it is essential to conserve and maintain biodiversity, the floristic composition and the mixture of its species. For this purpose, the objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of the selection silvicultural treatment as a function of time, on the horizontal structure of a Pine-Oak Forest in northern Mexico. Nine sampling points were established to analyze the structure of the Initial Condition of the forest in 2012, the Recruitment of 2022 and the Final Condition of 2022. In addition, the Jaccard similarity coefficient and the Margalef wealth index were estimated. Likewise, Shannon true diversity index, the importance value index and the forest value index were calculated for each species. The analysis of variance with a confidence of 95% was used to evaluate the studied variables, multiple comparisons were made with Duncan's test to group the species in ranges of statistical importance. The results indicated that the forest not presented a change in similarity, richness and diversity of species due to the application of the selection silvicultural treatment, without statistical differences according to the mix and distribution of the species in the forest, this indicates that selective logging does not change the composition of forest species. Regarding the indices of true diversity, value of importance and forest value by species, no significant differences were observed in terms of the application of silvicultural treatment. According to these results, it was possible to identify groups of forest importance and value, where Pinus durangensis Martínez was the most representative species.