Effects of the overstory on the diversity of the herb and shrub layers of Anatolian black pine forests

Yilmaz, Osman; Yılmaz, Hatice; Akyüz, Yaşar Feyza

doi:10.1007/s10342-018-1114-3

Cited by 11 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…In addition, these results indicate that separating shrubs and herbs layers may be a better choice in reflecting understory diversity dynamics as a response to forest thinning. After all, the dynamics of the shrub layer and the herb were diverse in at different stands (Yılmaz, Yılmaz, & Akyüz, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of forest thinning on understory diversity in China: A meta‐analysis

Zhang

et al. 2020

Land Degrad Dev

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Forest management has been widely used to maintain and improve multiple ecosystem services. However, large‐scale synthesis of the effects of forest management on understory diversity, especially regarding the effects of thinning, has not been well represented in China. Therefore, we synthesized 146 peer‐reviewed publications and conducted a meta‐analysis to evaluate the response of understory diversity (species richness) and seven related variables to forest thinning in China. Overall, forest thinning significantly increased shrub diversity by 28% and herb diversity by 24%. Unthinned diversity and recovery time were the two most important drivers of understory diversity. When the unthinned diversity was low, a decline of understory species richness in managed stands could occur, which may be related to the size of the regional species pool. Rather than the recovery time of 1–2 years after forest thinning, the period of 3–5 years after thinning found the greatest diversity improvement. The northern arid and semiarid ecological domains observed the greatest diversity improvement, which may be due to the specific characteristics in this ecological domain. The coniferous forest was more favorable for understory improvement than in the broadleaved forest. Specific mechanisms on how disturbance (thinning intensity) affect understory diversity need to be further explored. No significant influences of stand stage or sampling quadrat area could be identified. Our study provides a synthetic review of the effects of forest thinning on understory diversity in China and may benefit forest management strategies. Future studies should address changes in compositional or functional diversity after thinning.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of forest thinning on understory diversity in China: A meta‐analysis

Zhang

et al. 2020

Land Degrad Dev

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“…The alpine ecosystems are the most sensitive regions to environmental change, suitable for studying the response of ecosystem to climate change and predicting the response to future climate change (Ecology and Kessler, 2012). Altitude gradient in alpine ecosystems integrates changes in water, temperature, light, soil and other factors, and is considered to be one of the decisive factors affecting species diversity (Andra, 2016;Yılmaz et al, 2018). Many scholars have done some research on species diversity at different altitudes, but the differences are large.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vertical distribution differences of the understory herbs and their driving factors on shady and sunny slopes in high altitude mountainous areas

Han¹,

Yin²,

Xue³

et al. 2023

Front. For. Glob. Change

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The vertical distribution understanding of undergrowth herbaceous plants in high altitude mountain areas is of great significance to reveal the environmental gradient change law of plant diversity. However, the species composition of herbaceous plants at different altitude gradients and the relationship between diversity and environmental factors is still vague. This study takes the Sejila Mountain in southeast Tibet at an altitude of 2,000–3,300 m as the study area to analyze the vertical distribution differences of the understory herbs and their driving factors on shady and sunny slopes. The results showed that: (1) The number of families, genera and species of herbaceous plants on sunny slope is greater than that on shady slope. Asteraceae on shady and sunny slopes has the largest number of species; (2) The α diversity index of the herbs on shady slope shows a U-shaped trend. The Cody heterogeneity index (βC) is negatively correlated with the β diversity index. The herb richness index (R) on sunny slope is unimodal. The β diversity index displays the same as that of shady slope; (3) Different environmental factors have different effects on herb diversity. The correlation between environmental factors and diversity indicators indicates that there is a certain degree of clustering among samples. The environmental factors of shady slope and sunny slope are separated; and (4) The difference of water and heat conditions caused by altitude and slope aspect is an important driving factor for the diversity of herbage species, followed by soil clay content, silt content and slope gradient. This study will help to understand the species diversity and ecosystem characteristics of the region, and provide a reference for the study of plant community structure and function and rational utilization of understory plant resources in high-altitude mountain areas.

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“…At most, compositional coefficients have been used for the classification of stands in terms of the composition within canopy and understory layers separately (Youngblood 1993 presented a general framework to compare ecological communities that takes into account the size structure and composition simultaneously and illustrated their approach for the comparison of forest stands in terms of diameter distribution and tree species identity. While this framework has been successfully applied to describe and typify the structure and composition of Anatolian black pine forests (Yılmaz et al 2018) and to assess the amount structural and compositional variation within forests (Yao et al 2019), its full potential for the definition of forest typologies remains to be explored. Moreover, when characterizing and/or differentiating forest stands from a forestry perspective, both the distribution of tree diameters and tree heights may be relevant, because the provision of several forest goods (e.g., timber quantity and quality) and services (e.g., soil protection or habitat quality) depends on the distribution of these two variables.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A general method for the classification of forest stands using species composition and vertical and horizontal structure

Cáceres

Martín-Alcón²,

Coll

2019

Annals of Forest Science

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& Key message We present a novel approach to define pure-and mixed-forest typologies from the comparison of pairs of forest plots in terms of species identity, diameter, and height of their trees. & Context Forest typologies are useful for many purposes, including forest mapping, assessing habitat quality, studying forest dynamics, or defining sustainable management strategies. Quantitative typologies meant for forestry applications normally focus on horizontal and vertical structure of forest plots as main classification criteria, with species composition often playing a secondary role. The selection of relevant variables is often idiosyncratic and influenced by a priori expectations of the forest types to be distinguished. & Aims We present a general framework to define forest typologies where the dissimilarity between forest stands is assessed using coefficients that integrate the information of species composition with the univariate distribution of tree diameters or heights or the bivariate distribution of tree diameters and heights. & Methods We illustrate our proposal with the classification of forest inventory plots in Catalonia (NE Spain), comparing the results obtained using the bivariate distribution of diameters and heights to those obtained using either tree heights or tree diameters only. & Results The number of subtypes obtained using the tree diameter distribution for the calculation of dissimilarity was often the same as those obtained from the tree height distribution or to those using the bivariate distribution. However, classifications obtained using the three approaches were often different in terms of forest plot membership. & Conclusion The proposed classification framework is particularly suited to define forest typologies from forest inventory data and allows taking advantage of the bivariate distribution of diameters and heights if both variables are measured. It can provide support to the development of typologies in situations where fine-scale variability of topographic, climatic, and legacy management factors leads to fine-scale variation in forest structure and composition, including uneven-aged and mixed stands.

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Effects of the overstory on the diversity of the herb and shrub layers of Anatolian black pine forests

Cited by 11 publications

References 34 publications

The effects of forest thinning on understory diversity in China: A meta‐analysis

The effects of forest thinning on understory diversity in China: A meta‐analysis

Vertical distribution differences of the understory herbs and their driving factors on shady and sunny slopes in high altitude mountainous areas

A general method for the classification of forest stands using species composition and vertical and horizontal structure

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