Synchronised disturbances in spruce- and beech-dominated forests across the largest primary mountain forest landscape in temperate Europe

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F60460709%3A41320%2F23%3A97049" target="_blank" >RIV/60460709:41320/23:97049 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2023.120906" target="_blank" >http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2023.120906</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2023.120906" target="_blank" >10.1016/j.foreco.2023.120906</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Synchronised disturbances in spruce- and beech-dominated forests across the largest primary mountain forest landscape in temperate Europe

Original language description

Understanding temporal and spatial variations in historical disturbance regimes across intact, continuous, and altitudinally diverse primary forest landscapes is imperative to help forecast forest development and adapt forest management in an era of rapid environmental change. Because few complex primary forest landscapes remain in Europe, previous research has largely described disturbance regimes for individual forest types and smaller isolated stands. We studied the largest but still largely unprotected mountain primary forest landscape in temperate Europe, the Fagaras Mountains of Romania. To describe historical disturbance regimes and syn-chronicity in disturbance activity and trends between two widespread forest community types, dominated by Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) and European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.), we established 191 permanent study plots (70 beech; 121 spruce) across 11 valleys, thereby providing information at both stand and landscape levels. We used a dendrochronological approach to reconstruct and describe the spatiotemporal patterns of historical disturbances. We observed a diverse spectrum of disturbance severities and timing across the forest landscape. High-severity disturbances created periods of synchrony in disturbance activity at the landscape scale, while moderate-and low-severity disturbances were asynchronous and random in both spruce-and beech -dominated primary forests. We detected a peak of canopy disturbance across the region at the end of the nineteenth century, with the most important periods of disturbance between the 1890s and 1910s. At the stand scale, we observed periods of synchronised disturbances with varying severities across both forest types. The level of disturbance synchrony varied widely among the stands. The beta regression showed that spruce forests had significantly higher average synchrony and higher between-stand variability of synchrony than the beech-dominated forests. Synchronised disturbances with higher severity were infrequent, but they were critical as drivers of subsequent forest development pathways and dynamics across both forest types.Our results provide valuable insight into future resilience to climate-driven alterations of disturbance regimes in spruce-and beech-dominated mountain temperate forests in the Carpathians. We suggest that conservation efforts should recognize strictly protecting large continuous and altitudinally diversified forest landscapes such as Fagaras Mts. as a necessary measure to tackle climate change and ensure temporal and spatial structural heterogeneity driven by a wide range of disturbances. The diverse and synchronous disturbance activity among two interconnected forest vegetation types highlights the need for complex spatiotemporal forest management approaches that emulate disturbance synchronicity to foster biodiversity across multiple forest vegetation types within forest landscapes.

Czech name

—

Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

40102 - Forestry

Project

<a href="/en/project/GA21-27454S" target="_blank" >GA21-27454S: Large scale analyses of primary forests: Disentangling drivers of biomass and biodiversity indicators</a><br>

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2023

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Forest Ecology and Management

ISSN

0378-1127

e-ISSN

0378-1127

Volume of the periodical

537

Issue of the periodical within the volume

2023

Country of publishing house

NL - THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS

Number of pages

13

Pages from-to

1-13

UT code for WoS article

000971632400001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85151393367