Forest Transformation Urgency for Topsoil Diversity Optimization During Environmental Change

Abstract

Combined effect of environmental change and management variability leads to reduced soil diversity in homogenous forest stands. On the other hand, forest soil diversity is maintained with rich tree species composition. In this study, focus has been put on deriving urgency to change forest tree species composition in order to increase soil diversity in biogeographic regions with uneven impact of environmental change. The relation of forest tree species and soil diversities was compared between the periods of dominant sulphur deposition (1985–1994) and the period of regional environmental change (2003–2012) in the Czech Republic (Central Europe; 78 866 km2; 115–1602 m n.m.). Forest tree species and soil diversities were assessed using linear regression, discrimination analysis and geographically weighted regression including residue analysis. The effect of spatial differences of acid deposition on soil properties, though, decreased, still dependencies between the diversity of bedrock, soils and forest tree species increased significantly. Only 12.9 % of forests in the territory of the CR have optimum tree species diversity. The total of 65.9 % of forest require highly or moderately urgent transformation. An increase in spatial dependencies between soil and tree species diversities confirms the importance of site differentiation in forest transformation.

Biomonitoring and assessment of toxic element contamination in floodplain sediments and soils using fluorescein diacetate (FDA) enzymatic activity measurements: evaluation of possibilities and limitations through the case study of the Drava River floodplain

“…The univariate analysis and the box plots clearly show that the total microbial activity, measured by fluorescein diacetate assays, is significantly higher near the surface in the topsoil region. Recent studies also confirmed this heterogeneity regarding the microbial biomass and diversity (Mukhtar et al, 2021;Samec et al, 2020). It was stated that the microbial abundance and the structure of the community are decreasing with depth in a vertical soil profile.…”

Effect of Soil Diversity on Forest Plant Species Abundance: A Case Study from Central-European Highlands

“…The spatial dependence of forest-plant diversity on soil diversity indicates the integrity of the community with the bedrock. The correlations of the Central European forest diversity suggest distribution of their response to the variability of growth conditions along a gradient of soils with different fertility [49]. Soils of bedrock-derived fertility are less diversified and display lower resistance to changes in other environmental properties.…”

“…Physico-chemical properties were characterized by pH, determined by acidometry and by sorption properties: cation exchange capacity (CEC) and base saturation (BS) determined by ion-selective extraction. Substance budget determination addressed C org , N tot , Al 2 O 3 , CaO, MgO a P 2 O 5 , which are together with physical and physico-chemical soil properties most significantly differentiated in the Czech Republic [49].…”

“…where g k is the interval value count of selected soil property in the bioregion and g is the number of intervals of the whole selected soil property classification range [49]. Similar to H tfpd , soil-chemical diversity (H sc ) was also determined by summing the interval diversities of the individual chemical properties (x):…”