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Acadian forest resilience to clearcutting: implications for even-aged management in late-successional northern temperate forests

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Abstract

This study examines the recovery of late-successional forests in the Acadian Forest Region of northeastern North America after anthropogenic canopy disturbance. Tree species were sampled in a chronosequence of post-clearcut (3–54 years) and remnant late-successional forests (100–165 years) in four demographic size classes in Nova Scotia, Canada: seedlings, small saplings, large saplings, and canopy trees. Clearcut forests acquired late-successional canopy species composition within five decades after logging disturbance. Resilience to clearcutting was due principally to the persistence of residual shade-tolerant coniferous species, mostly red spruce (Picea rubens Sarg.) and eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis (L.) Carrière) in recovering stands. Redundancy analysis (RDA) revealed that most residual canopy species responded positively to canopy removal as small saplings, but not as seedlings. Seedlings of all residual canopy species exhibited strong associations with stand age, canopy cover, and microhabitats characteristic of older forests, such as rotting logs and smaller pieces of decayed wood. These results show that managed late-successional Acadian forests can recover quickly after clearcutting if advance tree regeneration (seedlings and saplings) is present and protected in the understory during canopy removal. Such Careful Logging methods focused on advance regeneration remain under-utilized in Acadian forests, though our results indicate they could better address silvicultural objectives such as maintaining a viable conifer component throughout stand development, as well as broader biodiversity goals in the management of late-successional forest types.

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Data availability

All the data generated in this study are stored in the University of Guelph Research Data Repository and available at: https://borealisdata.ca/dataverse/guelph.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Alex Mosseler at the Canadian Forest Service for assistance in identifying the late-successional forests sampled in the study as well as two anonymous reviewers who provided valuable comments.

Funding

The field component of this project was supported by a grant to Liette Vasseur (LV) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada—Canadian Forest Service (CFS) in partnership with Bowater Mersey Paper Company and an NSERC PGS-B scholarship to FM. The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of the manuscript itself.

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  1. Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road, Guelph, ON, N1G 2W1, Canada

    Faisal Moola

  2. Department of Biology, Lakehead University, 955 Oliver Rd, Thunder Bay, ON, P7B 5E1, Canada

    Philippe St. Martin & Azim U. Mallik

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, Brock University, 1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way, St. Catharines, ON, L2S 3A1, Canada

    Liette Vasseur

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  1. Faisal Moola
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Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Faisal Moola (FM), except for the NMDS, which was performed by Phillipe St. Martin (PSM). The first draft of the manuscript was written by FM, and all authors commented on previous versions. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Moola, F., St. Martin, P., Mallik, A.U. et al. Acadian forest resilience to clearcutting: implications for even-aged management in late-successional northern temperate forests. Plant Ecol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-024-01423-8

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