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Vegetation-based bioindication of humus forms in coniferous mountain forests

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Abstract

Humus forms, especially the occurrence and the thickness of the horizon of humified residues (OH), provide valuable information on site conditions. In mountain forest soils, humus forms show a high spatial variability and data on their spatial patterns is often scarce. Our aim was to test the applicability of various vegetation features as proxy for OH thickness. Subalpine coniferous forests dominated by Picea abies (L.) H. Karst. and Larix decidua Mill. were studied in the Province of Trento, Italian Alps, between ca. 900 and 2200 m a.s.l. Braun-Blanquet vegetation relevés and OH thickness were recorded at 152 plots. The vegetation parameters, tested for their suitability as indicators of OH thickness, encompassed mean Landolt indicator values of the herb layer (both unweighted and cover-weighted means) as well as parameters of vegetation structure (cover values of plant species groups) calculated from the relevés. To our knowledge, the predictive power of Landolt indicator values (LIVs) for humus forms had not been tested before. Correlations between OH thickness and mean LIVs were strongest for the soil reaction value, but indicator values for humus, nutrients, temperature and light were also significantly correlated with OH thickness. Generally, weighting with species cover reduced the indicator quality of mean LIVs for OH thickness. The strongest relationships between OH thickness and vegetation structure existed in the following indicators: the cover of forbs (excluding graminoids and ferns) and the cover of Ericaceae in the herb layer. Regression models predicting OH thickness based on vegetation structure had almost as much predictive power as models based on LIVs. We conclude that LIVs analysis can produce fairly reliable information regarding the thickness of the OH horizon and, thus, the humus form. If no relevé data are readily available, a field estimation of the cover values of certain easily distinguishable herb layer species groups is much faster than a vegetation survey with consecutive indicator value analysis, and might be a feasible way of quickly indicating the humus form.

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Acknowledgments

This study was conducted in the context of the D.A.CH. project DecAlp and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (Grant No. Br1106/23-1), the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) (Grant No. 205321L_141186) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). The authors thank all colleagues in the project for their outstanding cooperation. We are also grateful to Dott. Fabio Angeli (Ufficio Distrettuale Forestale di Malè) and the Stelvio National Park for supporting the field work. We thank the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geography, University of Osnabrueck, Seminarstraße 19ab, 49074, Osnabrueck, Germany

    Kerstin Anschlag, Niels Hellwig & Gabriele Broll

  2. Functional Ecology Laboratory, University of Neuchâtel, Rue Emile-Argand 11, 2000, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Dylan Tatti & Jean-Michel Gobat

  3. School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences HAFL, Bern University of Applied Sciences, Länggasse 85, 3052, Zollikofen, Switzerland

    Dylan Tatti

  4. MUSE, Corso del Lavoro e della Scienza 3, 38122, Trento, Italy

    Giacomo Sartori

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  1. Kerstin Anschlag
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  2. Dylan Tatti
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  3. Niels Hellwig
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  4. Giacomo Sartori
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Correspondence to Kerstin Anschlag.

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Anschlag, K., Tatti, D., Hellwig, N. et al. Vegetation-based bioindication of humus forms in coniferous mountain forests. J. Mt. Sci. 14, 662–673 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-016-4290-y

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