Changes in the Diversity of Evergreen and Deciduous Species During Natural Recovery Following Clear-Cutting in a Subtropical Evergreen-Deciduous Broadleaved Mixed Forest of Central China

Abstract

Clear-cutting has been a widespread commercial logging practice, causing substantial changes of biodiversity in many forests throughout the world. Forest recovery is a complex ecological process, and examining the recovery process after clear-cutting is important for forest conservation and management. In the present study, we established fourteen 20 m × 20 m plots in three recovery stages (20-year-old second growth, 35-year-old second growth and old growth) and explored the changes in evergreen and deciduous species diversity after clear-cutting in a subtropical evergreen-deciduous broadleaved mixed forest in central China. The results showed that total species richness was highest at the intermediate recovery stage. The species richness and stem abundance of evergreen species increased, while total and deciduous species stem abundance decreased with forest recovery.The basal area of both total and evergreen species increased, while that of the deciduous species showed a unimodal pattern. The abiotic conditions varied with the recovery process. Changes in species compositions were generally correlated with soil pH, total phosphorus, and CO. Our results suggest that deciduous species richness and stem abundance can recover after 20-35 years, but evergreen species need more time to recover following clear-cutting.

Variation in three community features across habitat types and scales within a 15‐ha subtropical evergreen‐deciduous broadleaved mixed forest dynamics plot in China

“…Moreover, soil conditions together explained more variations in community features than topographical conditions (Table and ). These results support the great importance of soil factors in determining the plant diversity and forest structure of the EDMBFs at local scale (Huang et al, ). Topographical conditions in the MLZ plot mainly impacted community features by determining the soil conditions, especially at small scale, where their effects are mostly shared.…”

“…The EDMBFs are sensitive to climate conditions at regional scale (Ge & Xie, 2017;Givnish, 2002;Kröber, Heklau, & Bruelheide, 2015), while the key environmental conditions in affecting these forests at local scale may be either soil or topographical conditions (Fang et al, 2016;Huang et al, 2015;Song et al, 2014;Xu et al, 2015). In this study, we found that changes in habitat followed by shifts in soil conditions (Supporting Information Figure S3) led to substantial variations in community features among habitats (Figure 3), indicating that habitat-associated soil conditions were the major factors in determining the plant diversity and forest structure of the EDBMFs at local scale.…”

“…At regional scale, latitude‐associated minimum temperature and mean annual precipitation were confirmed to contribute to the vegetation patterns of subtropical EDBMFs by affecting species compositions and the relative dominance of evergreen and deciduous (Ge & Xie, ). At local scale (within a climate zone), it is noteworthy that both microclimate and soil are habitat‐associated, and evidences support their effects on the coexistence of evergreen and deciduous tree species and the biomass, diversity and species composition of EDBMFs (Fang et al, ; Huang et al, ; Song, Kohyama, & Da, ; Xu et al, ). The fundamental cause for such a variety of environmental factors exerting impacts on EDBMFs is the significant niche differences among diverse species there, especially for evergreen and deciduous species with different leaf habits, which have long been deemed to relate to distinct strategies for dealing with environmental conditions (Ge & Xie, ; van Ommen Kloeke, Douma, Ordoñez, Reich, & Bodegom, ).…”

Broad‐leaved forest types affect soil fungal community structure and soil organic carbon contents

“…These forest ecosystems are known for both their quantity and quality of plant leaf litter (Guo et al, ), which greatly impacts underground organic matter (Yang et al, ) and soil microbial diversity (Ding et al, ; Hu, Jin, Liu, & Yu, ). In recent years, careful attention has been paid to the impacts of broad‐leaved forest conversion on plant species diversity (Huang et al, ) and soil labile organic matter (Chen et al, ; Yang et al, ), as well as differences in plant photosynthetic activity (Villar, Robleto, Jong, & Poorter, ) and soil nutrient requirements (Aerts, ; Givnish, ) between EBF and DBF. However, underground microbial diversity and their associated metabolic activities of EBF and DBF are poorly understood, particularly the soil fungal composition and related functional gene diversity.…”

Life form dynamics of the tree layer in evergreen and deciduous broad-leaved mixed forest during 1996–2017 in Tianmu Mountains, eastern China

“…As global climate change intensifies, ongoing monitoring could be valuable for documenting and understanding forest responses to climate change (Teixeira et al 2015;Mi et al 2016). The evergreen and deciduous broad-leaved mixed forest in China's subtropical mountains is complex and biologically diverse and is considered to be sensitive to changes in climate (Huang et al 2015a). In this type of forest, at higher latitudes, deciduous trees are dominant in the upper layers, while, evergreen broad-leaved species are less abundant and occupy the lower layer.…”