Influence of climate and thinning on Quercus pyrenaica Willd. coppices growth dynamics
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Influence of climate and thinning on Quercus pyrenaica Willd. coppices growth dynamics Daniel Moreno‑Fernández1,2 · Jorge Aldea3 · Guillermo Gea‑Izquierdo1 · Isabel Cañellas1 · Darío Martín‑Benito1 Received: 28 April 2020 / Revised: 7 September 2020 / Accepted: 25 September 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Many oak stands (Quercus spp.) have been managed as coppices for firewood production for centuries in the Mediterranean area. After the abandonment of firewood production during the 1980s, current management practices attempt to convert coppices into coppices-with-standards through thinning and promoting forest regeneration via sexual reproduction. In this work, we used long-term data from repeated forest inventories and dendrometers in a thinning trial to assess the effects of thinning and climate on the intra- and inter-annual growth dynamics of Quercus pyrenaica Willd. coppices. Our results revealed that thinning favored the growth of Q. pyrenaica trees, especially when the stand density reduction was high (ca. 50% of the basal area extracted). Unthinned plots displayed more natural mortality i.e., self-thinning. Growth was enhanced with low vapor pressure deficit. Intense thinning treatments displayed higher intra-annual growth rates and interacted positively with rainfall to induce higher growth. We conclude that thinning, especially intensive thinning, may alleviate the negative effects of dry years and thus could provide a potential measure to adapt these stands to the different climatic scenarios with higher temperatures and less precipitation within the framework of sustainable forest management. Keywords Climate change adaptation · Low forest · Drought stress · Stool · Splines
Introduction Due to climate change, drought periods, as well as other abiotic and biotic phenomena such as the hazard and severity of wildfires or the impact of pests and pathogens on forests, are forecasted to increase in the Mediterranean basin (Vázquez de la Cueva et al. 2012; Seidl et al. 2017). The reduction of tree competition for resources through thinning is carried out Communicated by Lluís Coll. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-020-01322-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Daniel Moreno‑Fernández [email protected] 1
INIA-CIFOR, Ctra. A Coruña km 7.5, 28040 Madrid, Spain
2
Forest Ecology and Restoration Group, Department of Life Sciences, Science Building, University of Alcala, 28805 Alcalá de Henares, Spain
3
Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sundsvägen 3, Alnarp, Sweden
to adapt forests to climate change and enhance the mitigation role played by forest systems (Aldea et al. 2017; Volkova and Weston 2019). Traditionally, humans have intensively exploited and shaped the Mediterranean forests of different Fagaceae species, including some oak species (Quercus genus) (Cotillas
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