Dataset Information

Natural succession and clearcutting as drivers of environmental heterogeneity and beta diversity in North American boreal forests.

ABSTRACT: Clear-cutting alters natural ecosystem processes by reducing landscape heterogeneity. It is the dominant harvesting technique across the boreal zone, yet understanding of how environmental heterogeneity and beta diversity are structured in forest ecosystems and post-clear cut is lacking. We use ground-dwelling arthropods as models to determine how natural succession (progression from deciduous to mixed to coniferous cover types) and clear-cutting change boreal forests, exploring the role of environmental heterogeneity in shaping beta diversity across multiple spatial scales (between-cover types and between-stands of the same cover type (1600 to 8500 m), between-plots (100 to 400 m) and within-plots (20 to 40 m)). We characterise environmental heterogeneity as variability in combined structural, vegetational and soil parameters, and beta diversity, as variability in assemblage composition. Clear-cutting homogenised forest environments across all spatial scales, reducing total environmental heterogeneity by 35%. Arthropod beta diversity reflected these changes at larger scales suggesting that environmental heterogeneity is useful in explaining beta diversity both between-cover types and between-stands of the same cover type. However, at smaller scales, within- and between-plots spider beta diversity reflected the lower environmental heterogeneity in regenerating stands, whereas staphylinid and carabids assemblages were not homogenised 12 years post-harvest. Differences in environmental heterogeneity and staphylinid beta diversity between cover types were also important at small scales. In regenerating stands, we detected a subtle yet notable effect of pre-felling cover type on environmental heterogeneity and arthropods, where pre-felling cover type accounted for a significant amount of variance in beta diversity, indicating that biological legacies (e.g. soil pH reflecting pre-harvest conditions) may have a role in driving beta diversity even 12 years post-harvest. This study highlights the importance of understanding site history when predicting impacts of change in forest ecosystems. Further, to understand drivers of beta diversity we must identify biological legacies shaping community structure.

SUBMITTER: Garcia-Tejero S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6214561 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Natural succession and clearcutting as drivers of environmental heterogeneity and beta diversity in North American boreal forests.

García-Tejero Sergio S Spence John R JR O'Halloran John J Bourassa Stephane S Oxbrough Anne A

PloS one 20181102 11

Clear-cutting alters natural ecosystem processes by reducing landscape heterogeneity. It is the dominant harvesting technique across the boreal zone, yet understanding of how environmental heterogeneity and beta diversity are structured in forest ecosystems and post-clear cut is lacking. We use ground-dwelling arthropods as models to determine how natural succession (progression from deciduous to mixed to coniferous cover types) and clear-cutting change boreal forests, exploring the role of envi ...[more]

PMID: 30388175

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Project description:In many parts of the world forest disturbance regimes have intensified recently, and future climatic changes are expected to amplify this development further in the coming decades. These changes are increasingly challenging the main objectives of forest ecosystem management, which are to provide ecosystem services sustainably to society and maintain the biological diversity of forests. Yet a comprehensive understanding of how disturbances affect these primary goals of ecosystem management is still lacking. We conducted a global literature review on the impact of three of the most important disturbance agents (fire, wind, and bark beetles) on 13 different ecosystem services and three indicators of biodiversity in forests of the boreal, cool- and warm-temperate biomes. Our objectives were to (i) synthesize the effect of natural disturbances on a wide range of possible objectives of forest management, and (ii) investigate standardized effect sizes of disturbance for selected indicators via a quantitative meta-analysis. We screened a total of 1958 disturbance studies published between 1981 and 2013, and reviewed 478 in detail. We first investigated the overall effect of disturbances on individual ecosystem services and indicators of biodiversity by means of independence tests, and subsequently examined the effect size of disturbances on indicators of carbon storage and biodiversity by means of regression analysis. Additionally, we investigated the effect of commonly used approaches of disturbance management, i.e. salvage logging and prescribed burning. We found that disturbance impacts on ecosystem services are generally negative, an effect that was supported for all categories of ecosystem services, i.e. supporting, provisioning, regulating, and cultural services (P < 0.001). Indicators of biodiversity, i.e. species richness, habitat quality and diversity indices, on the other hand were found to be influenced positively by disturbance (P < 0.001). Our analyses thus reveal a 'disturbance paradox', documenting that disturbances can put ecosystem services at risk while simultaneously facilitating biodiversity. A detailed investigation of disturbance effect sizes on carbon storage and biodiversity further underlined these divergent effects of disturbance. While a disturbance event on average causes a decrease in total ecosystem carbon by 38.5% (standardized coefficient for stand-replacing disturbance), it on average increases overall species richness by 35.6%. Disturbance-management approaches such as salvage logging and prescribed burning were neither found significantly to mitigate negative effects on ecosystem services nor to enhance positive effects on biodiversity, and thus were not found to alleviate the disturbance paradox. Considering that climate change is expected to intensify natural disturbance regimes, our results indicate that biodiversity will generally benefit from such changes while a sustainable provisioning of ecosystem services might come increasingly under pressure. This underlines that disturbance risk and resilience require increased attention in ecosystem management in the future, and that new approaches to addressing the disturbance paradox in management are needed.

Dataset Information

Natural succession and clearcutting as drivers of environmental heterogeneity and beta diversity in North American boreal forests.

Publications

Natural succession and clearcutting as drivers of environmental heterogeneity and beta diversity in North American boreal forests.

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