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Patterns of nutrient flow in the pygmy forest region of northern California

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Summary

Vegetation of the Mendocino coastal region forms a gradient from coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) stands, through Bishop pine (Pinus muricata), to endemic pygmy conifers (Pinus contorta ssp.bolanderi, Cupresses pygmaca) on terrace flat/podzols. Along this gradient nutrient stocks and net uptake decrease, and strategies for rapid nutrient circulation within the ecosystems are increasingly in evidence. Within the pygmy conifer forest, the dominant plant species exhibit differing characteristics in their pattern of net uptake, partition and turnover or recirculation of each essential element. ‘The pygmy forest nutrient pool has apparently been built up over centuries by soil weathering, N-fixation by lichens, and inputs from precipitation. Such an ecosystem would be likely to show weak’ resilience to a perturbation that removed standing vegetattion or the litter layer. Across a wide range of terrestrial ecosystems, the ratio of plant nutrient stocks to phytomass tends to decrease with increase in phytomass and net primary productivity. This trend is reflected on a smaller scale by the decrease in nutrient phytomass ratio from pygmy forest, through Bishop pine, to redwood stands (0.013, 0.009, 0.006 respectively). Nevertheless, terrestrial communities in the temperate and subtropical regions of moderate rainfall and non-saline soils appear to share a relatively constant nutrient/phytomass concentration (mean ±s.e.=0.101±0.0003; n=9).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of California, 90024, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Walter E. Westman

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  1. Walter E. Westman
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Additional information

Nomenclature follows Munz, 1959: A Californian Flora. Univ. California Press, Berkeley.

This research formed part of my doctoral dissertation at Cornell University. I am grateful for the extensive guidance of R.H. Whittaker throughout this work, and for his support under National Science Foundation grant GB-8095X. I thank Hans Jenny for permission to include unpublished information from his studies, and T. Wurzburger (Univ. Calif., Santa Barbara), H. Gauch, Jr. (Cornell Univ.) and A. Wallace (Univ. Calif., Los Angeles) for assistance in the analysis of tissue samples.

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Westman, W.E. Patterns of nutrient flow in the pygmy forest region of northern California. Vegetatio 36, 1–15 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01324767

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