Abstract
In a reserved forest parcel in a virgin eastern Hyrcanian mixed beech forest, 80 ha was surveyed to determine the pit and mound topography, canopy gaps and dead trees. The aim was to investigate the spatial patterns and correlation of pit and mound features with canopy gaps. Seventy-five canopy gaps and 61 pit and mound features were identified. The univariate first order nearest neighbor (RCE) and bivariate second order test (Ripley’s K) statistic were applied. RCE statistics highlighted a general aggregation pattern for canopy gaps and pits and mounds, while pits and mounds alone were more clumped. Distances between canopy gaps were 130 m average, whereas distances between pit and mound features and dead trees were 60 and 78 m, respectively. Spatial positive correlation of canopy gaps with pits and mounds were observed with all distances. The result of spatial correlations between canopy gaps with pits and mounds confirmed that windthrows cause micro successions in fallen tree ecosystem-scale correlated with gap phase dynamics in the forest community-scale.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Complete Spatial Randomness (CSR) is a standard model, describes a point process and states that the events follow a homogeneous Poisson Process over the study region (Maimon and Rokach 2010).
References
Akhavan R, Sagheb-Talebi Kh, Zenner EK, Safavimanesh F (2012) Spatial patterns in different forest development stages of an intact old-growth oriental beech forest in the Caspian region of Iran. Eur J For Res 125(1):225–237
Clark PJ, Evans FC (1954) Distance to nearest neighbor as a measure of spatial relationships in populations. Ecology 35:445–453
Clinton BD, Baker C (2000) Catastrophic windthrow in the Southern Appalachians: characteristics of pits and mounds and initial vegetation responses. For Ecol Manag 126:51–60
Dounavi A, Koutsias N, Ziehe H, Hattemer H (2010) Spatial patterns and genetic structures within beech populations (Fagus sylvatica L.) of forked and non-forked individuals. Eur J For Res 129:1191–1202
Duncan RP, Stewart GH (1991) The temporal and spatial analysis of tree age distributions. Can J For Res 21:1703–1710
Habashi H, Hosseini SM, Mohammadi J, Rahmani R (2007) Stand structure and spatial pattern of trees in mixed Hyrcanian beech forests of Iran. Iran J For Poplar Res 15:55–64
Heiri C, Wolf A, Rohrer L, Bugmann H (2009) Forty years of natural dynamics in Swiss beech forests: structure, composition, and the influence of former management. Ecol Appl 19(7):1920–1934
Jonsson BG (1993) Treefall disturbance, succession, and diversity in boreal forest floor vegetation. Doctoral Dissertation. University of Umea Sweden
Kan B, Wang Q, Wu W (2015) The influence of selective cutting of mixed Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis Sieb. et Zucc.) and broad-leaf forest on rare species distribution patterns and spatial correlation in Northeast China. J For Res 26(4):833–840
Kooch Y, Hosseini SH, Mohammadi J, Hojjati SM (2013) Effects of pit and mound landscape on soil ecosystem engineers at local scales-a case Study in Hyrcanian forest. Mol Soil Biol 4(1):7–15
Krebs CJ (1994) Ecology: the experimental analysis of distribution and abundance, 4th edn. Harper Collins, New York
Kunstler J, Curt T, Lepart J (2004) Spatial pattern of beech (Fagus csylvatica L.) and Oak (Quercus pubescens Mill) seedling in natural pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) wood lands. Eur J For Res 123:331–337
Liebhold AM, Gurevitch J (2002) Integrating the statistical analysis of spatial data in ecology. Ecography 25:553–557
Liechty HO, Jurgensen MF, Mroz GD, Gale MR (1997) Pit and mound topography and its influence on storage of carbon, nitrogen, and organic matter within an old-growth forest. Can J For Res 27(12):1992–1997
Maimon O, Rokach L (2010) Data mining and knowledge discovery handbook, 2nd edn. Springer, New York, pp 851–852
Martinez I, Wiegand T, Gonzalez-Taboada F, Obesco JR (2010) Spatial associations among tree species in a temperate forest community in North-western Spain. For Ecol Manag 260:456–465
Marvie Mohadjer MR (2007) Silviculture. Tehran University Publications, Tehran
Mcsweeney K, Meyers NL (1995) Influence of windthrow on soil properties in northern Wisconsin. Soil Sci Soc Am J 59:871–876
Moeur M (1993) Characterizing spatial patterns of trees using stem mapped data. For Sci 39:756–775
Nagel TA, Svoboda M, Diaci J (2006) Regeneration patterns after intermediate wind disturbance in an old-growth Fagus-Abies forest in southeastern Slovenia. For Ecol Manag 226:268–278
Oheimb G, Westphal C, Tempel H, Hardtle W (2005) Structural pattern of a near-natural beech forest (Fagus sylvatica)(Serrahn, North-east Germany). For Ecol Manag 212(1-3):253–263
Paluch J (2007) The spatial pattern of a natural European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.)-silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) forest: a patch-mosaic perspective. For Ecol Manag 253:161–170
Parhizkar P, Sagheb-Talebi Kh, Mataji A, Namiranian M (2011) Influence of gap size and development stages on the silvicultural characteristics of oriental beech (Fagus orientalis Lipsky) regeneration. Hyrcanian J Environ Sci 9(1):55–65
Perry GLW (2004) SpPack: spatial point pattern analysis in Excel using visual basic for applications (VBA). Environ Model Softw 19:559–569
Peterson CJ (2007) Consistent influence of tree diameter and species on damage in nine eastern North America tornado blow downs. For Ecol Manag 250:96–106
Phillips JD (2008) Soil system modelling and generation of field hypotheses. Geoderma 145:419–425
Pielou EC (1961) Segregation and symmetry in two-species populations as studied in nearest-neighbour relationships. J Ecol 49:255–269
Pourbabaei H, Ahani H, Bonyad AE (2005) Spatial pattern of Maple trees (Acer platanoides L.) in Guilan province. J Environ 1:24–30
Raphael P, Francois G (2001) A practical approach to the study of spatial structure in simple cases of heterogeneous vegetation. J Veg Sci 12(2):99–108
Ripley BD (1981) Spatial statistics. Wiley, New York
Runkle JR (1982) Patterns of disturbance in some old growth mesic forests of North America. Ecology 63:1533–1556
Sagheb-Talebi Kh, Sajedi T, Yazdian F (2004) Forests of Iran. Research Institute of Forests and Rangelands Press, Technical publication No. 339
Schaetzl RJ, Johnson DL, Burns SF, Small TW (1989) Tree uprooting: review of impact on forest ecology. Vegetation 79:165–176
Shambroch and Bokheim (2007) p 12
Sinclair DF (1985) On tests of spatial randomness using mean nearest neighbor distance. Ecology 66:1084–1085
Stone EL (1975) Winds throw influences on spatial heterogeneity in a forest soil. Mitt Eid Anst Forstl Versuchsw 51:77–87
Ulanova NG (2000) The effects of windthrow on forests at different spatial scales: a review. For Ecol Manag 135:155–167
Waez-Mousavi SM, Habashi H (2012) Evaluating humus forms variation in an unmanaged mixed beech forest using two different classification methods. iForest - Biogeosci For 5:272–275
Zeibig A, Diaci J, Wagner S (2005) Gap disturbance patterns of a Fagus sylvatica virgin forest remnant in the mountain vegetation belt of Slovenia. For. Snow Landsc Res 79:69–80
Zenner EK, Peck JE (2009) Characterizing structural conditions in mature managed red pine: spatial dependency of metrics and adequacy of plot size. For Ecol Manag 257:311–320
Zhang Q, Zhang Y, Peng S, Yirdaw E, Wu N (2009) Spatial structure of Alpine trees in mountain Baima Xueshan on the southeast Tibetan plateau. Silva Fennica 43:197–208
Acknowledgements
This paper is made possible through the help of Dr. Kooch and Ph.D. student Mrs. Moghimian for her efforts at the M.Sc. level. This project would have been impossible without the support of GAUSNR (Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources) grant. Also, I would like to thanks Dr. Ron Ayling and Dr. Chai for editing my paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Project funding: This study was supported by Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources.
The online version is available at http://www.springerlink.com
Corresponding editor: Chai Ruihai.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Habashi, H. Spatial correlation of pit and mound topography with canopy gaps in a virgin mixed beech forest, northern Iran. J. For. Res. 30, 295–303 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-018-0604-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-018-0604-y