The effect of age on height growth in even-sized saplings of Fagus sylvatica L.
- PDF / 263,392 Bytes
- 5 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 96 Downloads / 155 Views
SHORT COMMUNICATION
The effect of age on height growth in even-sized saplings of Fagus sylvatica L. Benjamı´n Jarcˇusˇka • Michael E. Day
Received: 2 May 2013 / Revised: 10 July 2013 / Accepted: 17 July 2013 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract Key message After controlling for the effects of size and light, partial regression revealed that height growth of common beech saplings was negatively affected by sapling age. Abstract Common beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) saplings were studied along gradients of light availability (4–82 % of full sunlight), initial size (9–290 cm), and age (2–25 years) to examine the interactive effect of these variables on saplings’ annual height growth. Although age was non-significant as a main effect in a linear model, sapling age had a significant interaction with the other variables. After controlling for the effects of size and light, partial regression revealed that height growth was negatively affected by sapling age. Observed growth decline in older common-sized saplings may be explained not as effect of age per se, but as indirect age-related effect probably induced through plastic response of saplings to past growth conditions.
Communicated by R. Matyssek.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00468-013-0911-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. B. Jarcˇusˇka (&) Institute of Forest Ecology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Lˇ. Sˇtu´ra 2, 960 53 Zvolen, Slovakia e-mail: [email protected] M. E. Day School of Forest Resources, University of Maine, Nutting Hall, Orono, ME 04469–5755, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Keywords Common beech Height growth Age Size Ontogeny Light
Introduction During sapling life stage, height growth is a critical component of ontogenetic development that enables trees to exploit available environment in vertical plane and thus forage for higher light microsites, and possibly overtop surrounding vegetation (Beaudet and Messier 1998; Munne´-Bosch 2007; Day and Greenwood 2011). Individuals that fall behind in the competition for canopy status are overtopped by interspecific and intraspecific competitors and likely to suffer mortality by inadequate carbon balance. Growth responses of saplings (trees that have been established some growing seasons that are in a pre-reproductive, i.e., juvenile, growth stage) are determined by the interaction of intrinsic genetic and extrinsic components (Day et al. 2002), and can be regulated by ontogenetic programming (Niinemets 2006; Day and Greenwood 2011; Lilles and Astrup 2012), environmental cues such as red:far-red light ratio (Gilbert et al. 2001) and above- and below-ground resources availability (i.e., light, water, nutrients; Wagner et al. 2010). Tree aging is inherently associated with increase in its size, therefore, tree height is often used as a proxy for its age (Hinckley et al. 2011) or effects of tree height and age are explained jointly, without discrimination between them (Niinemets 2002; Ewers et
Data Loading...
