Abstract
New forests on former agricultural land originate either from natural regeneration or active restoration. Previous research has compared biodiversity of naturally regenerated stands (NR) and plantations (PL), however, whether understory succession towards natural forests depends on stand type remains unknown. In this study, we used data from two monitorings on permanent plots (2011 and 2019) in PL (n = 11) and NR (n = 11) birch stands in Estonia to highlight successional changes in herb and bryophyte communities together with environmental changes. We further evaluated whether stand type influenced the recovery of forest specialists. We found an increase in tree growth characteristics, soil phosphorus and nitrogen content, no change in light conditions and a decrease in soil pH in both stand types. The amount of litter and deadwood was higher in NR in 2011. Herb richness increased from 123 to 130 and the number of bryophytes from 43 to 62. Stand types shared 50% of herb species in 2011 and 2019, while the fraction of shared bryophytes increased from 37.2 to 56.5%. We observed an increase of forest specialists and a decrease in light-demanding species (based on indicator value for light) in both stand types. Bryophyte cover and richness increased and species compositions of stand types converged. However, the number of bryophytes was significantly higher in NR plots indicating the significance of deadwood as growth substrate. We conclude that the recovery of forest understory followed similar successional pathways in PL and NR.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are very grateful to Silver Sisask for the contribution in field and lab works and to Taavi Riit for language editing.
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This research was funded by the Estonian Research Council (grants PRG1007, PRG1434, PSG730) and by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme under grant agreement No 101000406 (project ONEforest).
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Conceptualization: Tea Tullus, Reimo Lutter, Arvo Tullus, Aivo Vares, Hardi Tullus; Methodology: Tea Tullus, Reimo Lutter, Arvo Tullus, Aivo Vares, Hardi Tullus; Investigation: Tea Tullus, Reimo Lutter, Reeno Sopp, Mari-Liis Siller; Formal analysis: Tea Tullus, Arvo Tullus; Writing - Original Draft: Tea Tullus; Writing - Review & Editing: All authors; Visualization; Arvo Tullus, Tea Tullus; Funding acquisition: Hardi Tullus.
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Tullus, T., Lutter, R., Tullus, A. et al. Temporal dynamics of forest understory on former agricultural land follows similar pathways in plantations and naturally regenerated stands. New Forests (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11056-024-10052-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11056-024-10052-y