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Canopy accession strategies and climate responses for three Carya species common in the Eastern Deciduous Forest

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Maintenance of Carya in successional stands will require canopy disturbances larger than the gap-scale to increase understory light in conjunction with reduction in competition from shade-tolerant mesophytes.

Abstract

A widespread compositional shift has been reported in Quercus–Carya forests throughout the eastern USA. Quercus and Carya are failing to regenerate and understories of these stands are increasingly dominated by shade-tolerant mesophytes. Important in this successional shift are the canopy accession strategies and climate sensitivities of the dominant and projected replacement species. The goals of our study were to document establishment and canopy accession strategies and examine the relationships between climate variables and radial growth for Carya glabra, Carya ovata, and Carya alba. The majority (75 %) of Carya individuals established in open canopy conditions. However, 40 % of our samples experienced suppression before canopy accession. Average age at canopy accession for trees that were suppressed prior to canopy recruitment was 49 years. Carya that established in closed canopy conditions were suppressed an average of 22 years and were 2.6 cm diameter at breast height (dbh) before they ascended to the canopy or experienced a release episode. Gap origin-gap release trees were in open canopy conditions for an average of 18 years and were 6.5 cm dbh before experiencing a period of suppression. The three species exhibited similar responses to climate as they were generally sensitive to prior spring and current summer temperature, and prior winter and current summer precipitation, but radial growth trends were controlled more strongly by canopy position than climate. Maintenance of Carya in successional stands will require increases in understory light and reductions in competition from shade-tolerant mesophytes. Our results indicate that canopy disturbances larger than the gap-scale are needed for Carya establishment and canopy recruitment.

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Acknowledgments

Field data collection was funded by the NSF under grants BCS-0602445 and DGE-0538420. We thank Ryan Foster, Sara Hart, Kevin Horn, Chris Underwood, and Saskia van de Gevel for assistance in the field; Michael Dewar and Matt McConnell for assistance in the lab; and The Nature Conservancy and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation for sampling permission. We thank Grant Harley for helpful discussion on climate-growth analysis. We are also grateful for the comments provided by Shawn Fraver, Brian McCarthy, Gianluca Piovesan, and an anonymous reviewer that greatly improved the manuscript.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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  1. Department of Geography, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35487, USA

    Merrit M. Cowden & Justin L. Hart

  2. Department of Geography, Environment, and Society, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Megan L. Buchanan

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  1. Merrit M. Cowden
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Correspondence to Justin L. Hart.

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Communicated by G. Piovesan.

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Cowden, M.M., Hart, J.L. & Buchanan, M.L. Canopy accession strategies and climate responses for three Carya species common in the Eastern Deciduous Forest. Trees 28, 223–235 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00468-013-0944-3

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