Ground flora communities in temperate oceanic plantation forests and the influence of silvicultural, geographic and edaphic factors

A LiDAR-based approach for a multi-purpose characterization of Alpine forests: an Italian case study

“…The identified types confirmed the general homogeneity in the analyzed stands and had not any syntaxonomical significance. However, the separation of these vegetation types represents a contribution for the interpretation of the relationship (French et al 2008). Specifically, the cluster tree was split into two main groups: (1) mixed forests on primitive or medium evolved neutral substrates, corresponding mainly to pole wood and multilayer forest, which have low species richness; (2) mixed forests evolved or primitives, rich in species, mainly owing to mature or old forest.…”

Can plantation forests support plant species and communities of semi-natural woodland?

“…but including climbing species), bramble/briar, fern, graminoid (grass, rush and sedge), forb (broadleaved herbaceous plants) and bryophyte. Typical woodland species were subsequently identified after French et al (2008) and using information from Irish and British floras (Watson, 1981;Jermy et al, 1982;Hubbard, 1984;Clapham et al, 1987;Grime et al, 1988;Smith, 1990;Hill et al, 1991Hill et al, , 1992Hill et al, , 1994Fitter and Peat, 1994;Webb et al, 1996;Paton, 1999;Preston et al, 2002;Smith, 2004).…”

“…There have been few field studies directly comparing plantations and semi-natural woodlands in Ireland and, while they have found semi-natural woodlands to be more species-rich than plantations (Magurran, 1988;Fahy and Gormally, 1998;Coroi et al, 2004), their results are informative only at a local scale. French et al (2008) have described the plant communities of a range of Irish plantation types, including some of the sites used in this study, but there have been no large-scale field surveys directly comparing the plant communities of plantations and semi-natural woodlands in Ireland to date. Information on the key environmental drivers influencing woodland species is also lacking.…”

The importance of non‐crop vegetation for bird diversity in Sitka spruce plantations in Ireland

“…However, many such species tend not to persist in plantation forests after the crop-tree canopy closes at about 10 years (Moss et al 1979, Wilson et al 2006. Areas of evenaged, closed-canopy coniferous forest typically have little or no below-canopy shrub component (Ferris et al 2000, French et al 2008, which is positively associated with bird species richness (Lopez & Moro 1997, Díaz et al 1998. The bird diversity of plantations with sparse understorey shrub cover is likely to be enhanced by the provision of shrub-rich areas outside of the canopy.…”