Developing and Testing a Robust, Multi-Scale Framework for the Recovery of Longleaf Pine Understory Communities

Abstract

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Long-term, large-scale experiment reveals the effects of seed limitation, climate, and anthropogenic disturbance on restoration of plant communities in a biodiversity hotspot

“…We also found that some management activities have location-specific effects, through their influence on plant establishment and persistence. For example, the long-term benefits of removing preexisting vegetation (via herbicide application) prior to seed addition for the establishment and persistence of seeded species were noticeable at only one of our three geographic locations, Savannah River Site ( 46 ). This location-specific effect of herbicide application contrasts strongly with the consistent effect of seed addition, tree density, and litter depth across all three locations, suggesting that timing seed additions to coincide with favorable climatic conditions and implementing management that reduces tree density (via low planting densities or tree thinning) and decreases litter depth (via prescribed fire) are more likely to yield predictable positive effects on restoration of plant diversity.…”

“…1 B ) (see refs. 46 and 62 for additional information regarding sites and locations). These three locations fall strategically within three of the primary physiographic regions of longleaf pine ecosystems: Fall-line Sandhills, Atlantic Coastal Plain, and Southern Coastal Plain ( 63 , 64 ), respectively.…”

“…Seeds were collected locally (i.e., within 10 to 30 km of each site) to ensure use of local genotypes. In March 2011, seeds were added inside 5 × 5-m subplots at half of the plots at each site ( 62 ) across the three study locations. Due to nonoverlapping geographic ranges, four species were congeners, resulting in 25 total species across the three locations ( SI Appendix , Table S1 ).…”

“…Further details on how predictors were estimated are provided in the SI Appendix and in Orrock et al. ( 46 ). We evaluated pairwise correlations among continuous predictors using Pearson’s correlation and excluded one of a pair when highly correlated (> 0.7) ( SI Appendix , Figs.…”