Within-forest stand (or formation, or plot) and between-forest stand (or formation, or plot) biodiversity indices
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Kitikidou K
PROVIDER: S-EPMC9700325 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:The data paper refers to the research article "Assessment of spatial stand structure of hemiboreal conifer dominated forests according to different levels of naturalness" [1]. Forest ecosystem structure was quantified by using structural indices based on the nearest-neighborhood approach for individual trees. Species mingling, deadwood mingling, deadwood distribution, diameter differentiation and the uniform angle indices characterize the patterns of the complexity and diversity of forest ecosystems, including the arrangement of tree dimensions, species and deadwood as well as tree positioning regularities. The data is collected all over Estonia from the Estonian Network of Forest Research Plots; altogether 212 sample plots were used in this study. The plots of the Estonian Network of Forest Research Plots are re-measured in nature with an interval of five years. Forests were classified by their naturalness level as managed forests, recovering forests and natural forests. The information in this paper can be used by forest inventories for developing the methods of ecosystem naturalness assessment as well as for analysing naturalness, stand structures and tree patterns in hemiboreal forest ecosystems.
| S-EPMC7082525 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Background:This data paper provides a description of OpenNahele, the open Hawaiian forest plot database. OpenNahele includes 530 forest plots across the Hawaiian archipelago containing 43,590 individuals of 185 native and alien tree, shrub and tree fern species across six islands. We include estimates of maximum plant size (D950.1 and Dmax3) for 58 woody plant species, a key functional trait associated with dispersal distance and competition for light. OpenNahele can serve as a platform to test key ecological, evolutionary and conservation questions in a hotspot archipelago. New information:OpenNahele is the first database that compiles data from a large number of forest plots across the Hawaiian archipelago to allow broad and high resolution studies of biodiversity patterns.Keywords: Hawaii, forests, islands, biodiversity, community ecology, evolutionary ecology.
| S-EPMC6172291 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We investigated the nascent application and efficacy of sampling and sequencing environmental DNA (eDNA) in terrestrial environments using rainwater that filters through the forest canopy and understory vegetation (i.e., throughfall). We demonstrate the utility and potential of this method for measuring microbial communities and forest biodiversity. We collected pure rainwater (open sky) and throughfall, successfully extracted DNA, and generated over 5000 unique amplicon sequence variants. We found that several taxa including Mycoplasma sp., Spirosoma sp., Roseomonas sp., and Lactococcus sp. were present only in throughfall samples. Spiroplasma sp., Methylobacterium sp., Massilia sp., Pantoea sp., and Sphingomonas sp. were found in both types of samples, but more abundantly in throughfall than in rainwater. Throughfall samples contained Gammaproteobacteria that have been previously found to be plant-associated, and may contribute to important functional roles. We illustrate how this novel method can be used for measuring microbial biodiversity in forest ecosystems, foreshadowing the utility for quantifying both prokaryotic and eukaryotic lifeforms. Leveraging these methods will enhance our ability to detect extant species, describe new species, and improve our overall understanding of ecological community dynamics in forest ecosystems.
| S-EPMC7811025 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In forests, the amount and diversity of structural features with high value for biodiversity, such as large trees and dead wood, are affected by productivity, stand age, and forest management. For efficient conservation of forest biodiversity, it is essential to understand the combined effects of these drivers. We used data from the Swedish National Forest Inventory to study the combined effects of productivity, stand age, and management for wood production on structures with high value for biodiversity: tree species richness, large living trees, dead wood volume, and specific dead wood types. Forest management changed the relationship between productivity and amount or diversity of some of the structures. Most structures increased with productivity and stand age, but decreased due to management. The negative effect of management was greatest for structures occurring mainly in high-productivity forests, such as deciduous dead wood. Thus, biodiversity conservation should target high-productivity forests to preserve these structures.
| S-EPMC10992050 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundConservation of the evolutionary diversity among organisms should be included in the selection of priority regions for preservation of Earth's biodiversity. Traditionally, biodiversity has been determined from an assessment of species richness (S), abundance, evenness, rarity, etc. of organisms but not from variation in species' evolutionary histories. Phylogenetic diversity (PD) measures evolutionary differences between taxa in a community and is gaining acceptance as a biodiversity assessment tool. However, with the increase in the number of ways to calculate PD, end-users and decision-makers are left wondering how metrics compare and what data are needed to calculate various metrics.New informationIn this study, we used massively parallel sequencing to generate over 65,000 DNA characters from three cellular compartments for over 60 species in the asterid clade of flowering plants. We estimated asterid phylogenies from character datasets of varying nucleotide quantities, and then assessed the effect of varying character datasets on resulting PD metric values. We also compared multiple PD metrics with traditional diversity indices (including S) among two endangered grassland prairies in Nebraska (U.S.A.). Our results revealed that PD metrics varied based on the quantity of genes used to infer the phylogenies; therefore, when comparing PD metrics between sites, it is vital to use comparable datasets. Additionally, various PD metrics and traditional diversity indices characterize biodiversity differently and should be chosen depending on the research question. Our study provides empirical results that reveal the value of measuring PD when considering sites for conservation, and it highlights the usefulness of using PD metrics in combination with other diversity indices when studying community assembly and ecosystem functioning. Ours is just one example of the types of investigations that need to be conducted across the tree of life and across varying ecosystems in order to build a database of phylogenetic diversity assessments that lead to a pool of results upon which a guide through the plethora of PD metrics may be prepared for use by ecologists and conservation planners.
| S-EPMC4549632 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Previous studies show that forest net primary productivity (NPP) varies pronouncedly with stand age, and these variations play a crucial role in determining forest carbon sinks or sources at regional scales. Some forest carbon cycling models, eg. InTEC (The integrated terrestrial ecosystem C-budget model), calculates annual forest NPP in the long term according to normalized NPP-age relationships and the reference forest NPP at a given age. Therefore, the accurate NPP-age relationship is important for forest NPP estimation. In this study, NPP at various stand ages for twelve major forest stand types in Heilongjiang Province in northeast China is derived from yield tables with consideration of the total biomass increment and foliage and fine-root turnovers. Similar to previous studies, our results also show that forest NPP increases quickly at young ages, reaches the maximum value at middle age (10-40 years old), and then decreases to a relative stable level at old ages. However, we additionally found that forests under better site conditions have faster growth rates in young ages and steeper declines after reaching the maximum. Therefore, when the NPP-age curves for different site indices are normalized against the maximum value of each curve, there are significant differences among them. These differences have implications on the methodology for estimating the spatial distribution of forest carbon sources and sinks.
| S-EPMC5426654 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Species confined to naturally fragmented habitats may exhibit intrinsic population complexity which may challenge interpretations of species response to anthropogenic landscape transformation. In South Africa, where native forests are naturally fragmented, forest-dependent birds have undergone range declines since 1992, most notably among insectivores. These insectivores appear sensitive to the quality of natural matrix habitats, and it is unknown whether transformation of the landscape matrix has disrupted gene flow in these species. We undertook a landscape genetics study of four forest-dependent insectivorous songbirds across southeast South Africa. Microsatellite data were used to conduct a priori optimization of landscape resistance surfaces (land cover, rivers and dams, and elevation) using cost-distances along least-cost pathway (LCP), and resistance distances (IBR). We detected pronounced declines in effective population sizes over the past two centuries for the endemic forest specialist Cossypha dichroa and Batis capensis, alongside recent gene flow disruption in B. capensis, C. dichroa and Pogonocichla stellata. Landscape resistance modelling showed both native forest and dense thicket configuration facilitates gene flow in P. stellata, B. capensis and C. dichroa. Facultative dispersal of P. stellata through dense thicket likely aided resilience against historic landscape transformation, whereas combined forest-thicket degradation adversely affected the forest generalist B. capensis. By contrast, Phylloscopus ruficapilla appears least reliant upon landscape features to maintain gene flow and was least impacted by anthropogenic landscape transformation. Collectively, gene flow in all four species is improved at lower elevations, along river valleys, and riparian corridors- where native forest and dense thicket better persist. Consistent outperformance of LCP over IBR land-cover models for P. stellata, B. capensis and C. dichroa demonstrates the benefits of wildlife corridors for South African forest-dependent bird conservation, to ameliorate the extinction debts from past and present anthropogenic forest exploitation.
| S-EPMC8591328 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Masting-temporally variable seed production with high spatial synchrony-is a pervasive strategy in wind-pollinated trees that is hypothesized to be vulnerable to climate change due to its correlation with variability in abiotic conditions. Recent work suggests that aging may also have strong effects on seed production patterns of trees, but this potential confounding factor has not been considered in previous times series analysis of climate change effects. Using a 54 year dataset for seven dominant species in 17 forests across Poland, we used the proportion of seed-producing trees (PST) to contrast the predictions of the climate change and aging hypotheses in Abies alba, Fagus sylvatica, Larix decidua, Picea abies, Pinus sylvestris, Quercus petraea, and Quercus robur. Our results show that in all species, PST increased over time and that this change correlated most strongly with stand age, while the standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index, a measure of drought, contributed to temporal trends in PST of F. sylvatica and Q. robur. Temporal variability of PST also increased over time in all species except P. sylvestris, while trends in temporal autocorrelation and among-stand synchrony reflect species-specific masting strategies. Our results suggest a pivotal role of plant ontogeny in driving not only the extent but also variability and synchrony of reproduction in temperate forest trees. In a time of increasing forest regrowth in Europe, we therefore call for increased attention to demographic effects such as aging on plant reproductive behavior, particularly in studies examining global change effects using long-term time series data.
| S-EPMC7079002 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Tropical forests are being deforested worldwide, and the remaining fragments are suffering from biomass and biodiversity erosion. Quantifying this erosion is challenging because ground data on tropical biodiversity and biomass are often sparse. Here, we use an unprecedented dataset of 1819 field surveys covering the entire Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot. We show that 83-85% of the surveys presented losses in forest biomass and tree species richness, functional traits, and conservation value. On average, forest fragments have 25-32% less biomass, 23-31% fewer species, and 33, 36, and 42% fewer individuals of late-successional, large-seeded, and endemic species, respectively. Biodiversity and biomass erosion are lower inside strictly protected conservation units, particularly in large ones. We estimate that biomass erosion across the Atlantic Forest remnants is equivalent to the loss of 55-70 thousand km2 of forests or US$2.3-2.6 billion in carbon credits. These figures have direct implications on mechanisms of climate change mitigation.
| S-EPMC7733445 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The evergreen and deciduous broadleaved mixed forests (EDBMFs) belong to one of the ecosystems most sensitive to environmental change, however, little is known about the environmental determinants for their plant diversity and forest structure at different habitat types and spatial scales. Here, we used data from a 15-ha (300 × 500 m) forest dynamic plot (FDP) of an old-growth EDBMF to examine the patterns and determinants of the three community features (stem abundance, rarefied species richness and basal area [BA]) in three habitat types (ridge, hillside and foothill) and at three spatial scales (20 × 20 m, 50 × 50 m, and 100 × 100 m). We found that the three community features significantly changed with habitat type, but only one of them (rarefied richness) changed with scale. Among spatial scales, the principle environmental factors that widely affected community features were pH, soil organic matter, and total phosphorus, while these effects only taken place at certain habitat. Variations in the three community features explained by soil conditions were generally greater than those explained by topographical conditions. With changes in habitat type, the proportion of variations explained by environmental conditions was 31%-53%, 8%-25%, and 18%-26% for abundance, rarefied richness, and BA, respectively. With increasing spatial scale, the variations explained by environmental conditions were 44%-75% for abundance, 28%-95% for rarefied richness, and 18%-86% for BA. Our study demonstrated that environmental factors had great impacts on the plant diversity and forest structure in the EDBMFs, especially the soil factors such as pH. In addition, the importance of the environmental determinants on these community features was highly related to the spatial scale.
| S-EPMC6303768 | biostudies-literature