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Plant β-diversity in human-altered forest ecosystems: the importance of the structural, spatial, and topographical characteristics of stands in patterning plant species assemblages

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Abstract

An understanding of spatial patterns of plant species diversity and the factors that drive those patterns is critical for the development of appropriate biodiversity management in forest ecosystems. We studied the spatial organization of plant species in human-modified and managed oak forests (primarily, Quercus faginea) in the Central Pre-Pyrenees, Spain. To test whether plant community assemblages varied non-randomly across the spatial scales, we used multiplicative diversity partitioning based on a nested hierarchical design of three increasingly coarser spatial scales (transect, stand, region). To quantify the importance of the structural, spatial, and topographical characteristics of stands in patterning plant species assemblages and identify the determinants of plant diversity patterns, we used canonical ordination. We observed a high contribution of β-diversity to total γ-diversity and found β-diversity to be higher and α-diversity to be lower than expected by random distributions of individuals at different spatial scales. Results, however, partly depended on the weighting of rare and abundant species. Variables expressing the historical management intensities of the stand such as mean stand age, the abundance of the dominant tree species (Q. faginea), age structure of the stand, and stand size were the main factors that explained the compositional variation in plant communities. The results indicate that (1) the structural, spatial, and topographical characteristics of the forest stands have the greatest effect on diversity patterns, (2) forests in landscapes that have different land use histories are environmentally heterogeneous and, therefore, can experience high levels of compositional differentiation, even at local scales (e.g., within the same stand). Maintaining habitat heterogeneity at multiple spatial scales should be considered in the development of management plans for enhancing plant diversity and related functions in human-altered forests.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Arben Q. Alla, Gabriel Sangüesa-Barreda, Guillermo C. Bueno, Benjamin Komac, Maite Gartzia, Hugo Saiz, and Paloma Nuche for assistance in the field. Y.K. was funded by a MAEC-AECID grant from the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development, and A.F. was supported by a JAE-doc postdoctoral contract from the framework “Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios” (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness), co-financed by the European Social Fund. This study was part of the research project CGL2011-27259 (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and Innovation) co-financed by the FEDER.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (CSIC), Avda. Montañana 1005, 50059, Zaragoza, Spain

    Yacine Kouba & Concepción L. Alados

  2. Dpto. de Silvopascicultura, Escuela de Ingeniería Forestal y del Medio Natural, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Paseo de Las Moreras s/n, 28040, Madrid, Spain

    Felipe Martínez-García

  3. Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (CSIC), Avda Nuestra Señora de la Victoria s/n, 22700, Jaca, Huesca, Spain

    Ángel de Frutos

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  1. Yacine Kouba
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  3. Ángel de Frutos
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  4. Concepción L. Alados
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Correspondence to Yacine Kouba.

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Communicated by M. Del Rio.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 4 and Fig. 6.

Table 4 The codes, scientific names, growth forms, abundance, and frequency (i.e., number of transects in which the species occurred) of the documented plant species in ten Q. faginea forest stands in the Central Pre-Pyrenees, Spain
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Fig. 6
figure 6

species richness (Hill Index with exponent q = 0) (a) and exponential of Shannon entropy (Hill index with exponent q = 1) (b) for plant ecological groups found in the Q. faginea forest stands in the Central Pre-Pyrenees, Spain. Boxes depict the 25th and 75th percentiles, and whiskers represent the 5th and 95th percentiles

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Kouba, Y., Martínez-García, F., de Frutos, Á. et al. Plant β-diversity in human-altered forest ecosystems: the importance of the structural, spatial, and topographical characteristics of stands in patterning plant species assemblages. Eur J Forest Res 133, 1057–1072 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-014-0822-6

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