Compositional changes in thermophilous oak forests in Poland over time: do they correspond to European trends?

Reczyńska, Kamila; Świerkosz, Krzysztof

doi:10.1111/avsc.12290

Cited by 21 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…These trends, detected in several studies around Europe (e.g. Hédl, 2004;Bartha, Merolli, Campetella, and Canullo, 2008;Amici et al, 2013;Becker et al, 2017;Reczyńska and Świerkosz, 2017;Perring et al, 2018b) are also consistent with our findings.…”

Section: F I G U R Esupporting

confidence: 94%

Long‐term changes in Italian mountain forests detected by resurvey of historical vegetation data

Lelli

Nascimbene

Alberti

et al. 2020

J Vegetation Science

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Aim: In the last decades most European mountain forests have been abandoned after centuries of human management, paving the way for a landscape planning oriented to the conservation and rewilding of forest ecosystems. By resurveying historical vegetation plots in a mountain area of the Italian Apennines (southern Europe), we focused on yet overlooked processes in this area, to allow for a more comprehensive picture of the ongoing dynamics at a broad forest landscape scale. Location: Mountain forests in the northern Apennines, Italy. Methods: We resampled 22 historical forest vegetation plots recorded between 1934 and 1961. In each original quasi-permanent plot, three plots were sampled to improve the reliability of the comparison. We analyzed changes in forest cover, structure, alpha, beta, and gamma diversity, and ecological groups focusing on the understorey species community. Results: Forests are getting poorer in species in the understorey, with a higher tree layer and denser canopy cover. Alpha and gamma diversity significantly decreased from the original to the resurveyed plots. Several species of open habitats were associated with the original plots, while in the resurveyed plots several shade-adapted species were detected. Forest cover in the surroundings of the sites remained stable for the higher sites along the Apennines mountain ridge, while major changes in the surroundings and in species composition were detected for the plots located at lower elevations and marginal sites. Conclusions: Our main findings are in line with the majority of resurvey studies performed in European forests, with a general mesification of local communities after management cessation. Despite the limited number of available historical plots, their location along a wide gradient of elevation and naturalness allowed considering also the importance of site location, forest continuity and marginality as drivers of changes that need to be taken into account when planning conservation actions for restoration of mature forests.

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Section: F I G U R Esupporting

confidence: 94%

Long‐term changes in Italian mountain forests detected by resurvey of historical vegetation data

Lelli

Nascimbene

Alberti

et al. 2020

J Vegetation Science

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“…Naaf & Kolk, ; Naaf & Wulf, ), forests released from a major disturbance (e.g. fire suppression in McCune & Vellend, ; Li & Waller, ; recent management cessation in Vanhellemont, Baeten, & Verheyen, ; Reczyńska & Świerkosz, ), or forests recently submitted to a new disturbance (e.g. deer browsing in Vild et al, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do drivers of forestry vehicles also drive herb layer changes (1970–2015) in a temperate forest with contrasting habitat and management conditions?

2019

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1. Managing ecosystems effectively for the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services requires to understand how these ecosystems are changing and what are the drivers behind these changes. The resurvey of plant communities sampled some decades ago is increasingly used for this purpose.2. We used a life-history trait-based approach to test a number of hypothesized drivers behind decadal changes in the herb layer of an ancient broadleaved lowland forest exhibiting contrasted soil and management types, while minimizing potential relocation and observer errors.3. Process-based hypotheses were tested using paired comparisons (old vs. new records) of community-weighted means and conditional inference classification trees for a number of traits across soil and management types. We then investigated how these processes impacted species composition and diversity within stands, among stands and at the entire forest scale, using metrics of taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity. 4. Though they have been continuously managed as regular high forest, managed stands experienced more pronounced vegetation changes than those left unmanaged. This could be directly or indirectly related to modifications in forest harvesting practices since 1970, via light availability at the forest floor, soil disturbance and local N deposition. 5. While forest specialists increased their abundance over the entire forest, managed stands showed the strongest compositional changes, especially on the soil types that were more susceptible to compaction. Increasingly heavy forestry vehicles that drive more frequently across forest stands likely generate microhabitats suitable for ferns, graminoids and N-demanding forbs and also act as dispersal agents.6. Species richness of vascular plants increased at both stand (α-diversity) and forest (γ-diversity) scales, due to the non-random, directional colonization by the same suite of species, causing compositional, functional and phylogenetic homogenization among habitats (i.e. decreased β-diversity).7. Synthesis. Forest management, via the repeated passing of heavy forestry vehicles, emerged as the key driver of local vegetation changes. By altering canopy structure, it also increased the vulnerability of understories to climate warming

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“…The declining species richness of European lowland forests is considered to be a result of the cessation of traditional forest management (Hédl et al., ; Kopecký et al., ) and environmental eutrophication and acidification (Baeten et al., ; Becker, Spanka, Schröder, & Leuschner, ; Jantsch, Fischer, Fischer, & Winter, ). However, changes in species richness are variable and some recent studies actually found increasing species richness in European forests (Förster, Becker, Gerlach, Meesenburg, & Leuschner, ; Reczyńska & Świerkosz, ; Vild et al., ; Strubelt, Diekmann, & Zacharias, ). The species richness of studied sub‐montane forests declined significantly, but the magnitude of these changes was relatively small compared to lowland forests (Bernhardt‐Römermann et al., ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Landscape‐scale vegetation homogenization in Central European sub‐montane forests over the past 50 years

Prach

Kopecký

2018

Applied Vegetation Science

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Questions: How did plant species richness and spatial heterogeneity of the vegetation change across sub-montane forests over the past 50 years? Did the vegetation changes reflect eutrophication, acidification and management changes, which the area underwent during the second half of the 20th century?Location: Ordinary managed forests sampled across 2500 km 2 of a typical Central European sub-montane landscape in the southern part of the Czech Republic. Methods:We resampled 156 quasi-permanent plots sampled in the 1950s-1970s and covering the whole range of forest vegetation in the region. We compared understorey plant species richness and community composition between the surveys and tested for temporal changes in the spatial heterogeneity (β-diversity) of vegetation.Results: Species richness and dissimilarity in species composition among plots decreased significantly between the surveys. The vegetation of the plots also changed significantly, but there were no clear directional changes across all plots. The vegetation homogenization was driven by local extinctions of specialist species, especially competitively weak species adapted to nutrient-poor conditions. Few generalist species expanded between the surveys. Conclusions:We found evidence of taxonomic homogenization of forest understoreys across a large sub-montane region. This vegetation homogenization was probably driven by complex landscape changes that took place in the last century. Varied traditional management regimes were replaced with largely uniform management, and the once spatially diverse landscape mosaic has become simpler. The resulting transition to species-poor and less variable vegetation was probably further accelerated by environmental eutrophication. Our results thus complement previous forest herb layer resurveys, which focused mostly on lowland forests and small nature reserves, and suggest that landscape-scale taxonomic homogenization is occurring across Central European forests. K E Y W O R D Sbeta diversity, biotic homogenization, eutrophication, forest understorey, landscape change, semi-permanent plots, species richness, temperate forests, vegetation resurvey 374 |

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Compositional changes in thermophilous oak forests in Poland over time: do they correspond to European trends?

Cited by 21 publications

References 43 publications

Long‐term changes in Italian mountain forests detected by resurvey of historical vegetation data

Long‐term changes in Italian mountain forests detected by resurvey of historical vegetation data

Do drivers of forestry vehicles also drive herb layer changes (1970–2015) in a temperate forest with contrasting habitat and management conditions?

Landscape‐scale vegetation homogenization in Central European sub‐montane forests over the past 50 years

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