Relating land-use history and climate to the dendroecology of a 326-year-old Quercus prinus talus slope forest

Abstract

Dendroecology and land-use history were used to investigate the ecological history of a 326-year-old Quercus prinus L. forest. Quercus prinus, Castanea dentata (Marsh.) Borkh., and Pinus rigida Mill. dominated this talus slope prior to European settlement based on witness tree records. Oak species have exhibited continuous recruitment over three centuries probably in response to periodic fire and wind disturbances. While the stand escaped the direct impacts of timber cutting and the charcoal iron industry, the indirect effects of these land-use practices increased growth and recruitment. Different criteria were used for understory versus overstory trees to improve our detection of growth releases. Overall, major disturbances occurred approximately every 40 and 31 years before and after European settlement, respectively. This century, old-growth Q. prinus experienced marked growth increases coupled with high recruitment following the introduction of the chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica (Murr.) Barr.) to the stand in 1909. Tree growth was also highly correlated with temperature and Palmer drought severity indices between 1895 and 1995. Climatic fluctuations in the 1820s-1830s and 1920s reduced radial growth and recruitment resulting in stem exclusion stages following regeneration pulses. Relating land-use history and climatic data to the dendroecology of this forest improved our understanding of its historical development.

Detecting the impact of climate and disturbances on tree-rings of Fagus sylvatica L. and Quercus robur L. in a lowland forest in Cantabria, Northern Spain

“…A growth release was here defined as a 100% increase in mean ring-width when consecutive groups of 10 years were compared. The 100% threshold in PGC is a conservative criterion to discriminate the local disturbance signals from sharp growth increases related to other factors [1,2,3,16,23,28,37]. Furthermore, the years whose radial growth was lower than 0.5 mm were considered as growth suppressions [16].…”

“…The relationships between the climatic variation and the radial growth of both tree species in many European localities have been widely studied during the last decades [4,5,13,17,18,20,22,34,38,42]. Dendroecological techniques have demonstrated to be efficient tools for reconstructing the past disturbance regime in many types of Fagus and Quercus forests [1,2,3,16,33,37]. Dendroecological reconstruction of the disturbance history have been achieved in some European forests [8,33].…”

Stand history and its consequences for the present and future dynamic in two silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) stands in the high Pesio Valley (Piedmont, Italy)

“…Natural disturbance regimes have been replaced by disturbances, caused by people, that are linked to economic and social development [45]. Consequently, land-use and forest-use history is a fundamental determinant in shaping vegetative composition and stand structure in forests, and this cultural legacy has important implications for the present-day structure and composition of forest ecosystems and for the present and future forest management [15,16,40,58,48].…”

Spatial Patterns of Canopy Disturbance, Structure, and Species Composition in a Multi-Cohort Hardwood Stand

“…The return interval for stand-wide disturbance in forests of the eastern USA is reported to be ca. 30 to 50 years [37,62,68]. The 39-year interval between the 1906 and 1945 stand-wide disturbance events falls within this range, however, the stand endured 70 years since the 1945 event.…”