Seedling recruitment in response to artificial gaps: predicting the ecological consequence of forest disturbance
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Seedling recruitment in response to artificial gaps: predicting the ecological consequence of forest disturbance Mingming Zhang
. Xianfeng Yi
Received: 28 April 2020 / Accepted: 3 October 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Artificial gaps are widely created for forest management. However, the interactive effects of gap sizes and within-gap locations on seedling regeneration are rarely tested. Therefore, whether there are lower and upper size limits for artificial gaps remains controversial. Here, we aimed to test the hypothesis that the effects of within-gap positions on seedling regeneration are dependent on gap sizes. Newly germinated wild seedlings of shade-intolerant Quercus mongolica scattered in different positions within artificially created gaps of different sizes were surveyed to test our hypothesis. Large gaps promoted seedling growth more than medium and small gaps. The increase in Q. mongolica seedling growth in large gaps can be largely attributed to the dormancy breaking of the apical buds and increased net photosynthetic rates. More importantly, we showed that the
effects of within-gap position were prominent only in medium gaps, i.e., the effect of within-gap position appears to be dependent on gap size. We show an integrative effect of gap size and within-gap location on seedling performance of shade-intolerant oaks, suggesting future studies should evaluate the influence of within-gap location in conjunction with the role of gap size. We therefore suggest that gap creation in silvicultural systems should highlight the lower and upper size limits of forest gaps, which will vary with the species and regions studied. Keywords Forest gap Within-gap position Seedling growth Shade intolerance Quercus mongolica Temperate forest
Introduction Communicated by Thomas A. Nagel.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-020-01089-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. M. Zhang College of Agriculture, Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang 471000, China X. Yi (&) College of Life Sciences, Qufu Normal University, Qufu 273165, China e-mail: [email protected]
Forest gap not only affects seed germination and emergence, seedling growth, and establishment of both shade-tolerant and -intolerant species (Hofmann and Isselstein 2004; Pakeman and Small 2005; Giordano et al. 2009) but also plays an important role in maintaining species dynamics and enhancing biological diversity of forest ecosystems (Gray and Spies 1997; VanPelt and Franklin 1999; Kellner and Asner 2009; Lu et al. 2015). Previous studies have demonstrated that forest gaps can be more important for
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regeneration of shade-intolerant species than for shade tolerant plants (Gray and Spies 1996; Muscolo et al. 2014, but see Forrester et al. 2014). The fact that seedlings grow faster in open gaps than in understory makes forest gaps important for tree regeneration
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