Journal
PLOS ONE
Volume 8, Issue 3, Pages -Publisher
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0058983
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- National Special Research Program for Forestry Welfare of China [200904022]
- 12th five-year National Science and Technology plan of China [2012BAC01B03]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [31200315]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This contribution identifies spatial characteristics of tree diameter in a temperate forest in north-eastern China, based on a fully censused observational study area covering 5006600 m. Mark correlation analysis with three null hypothesis models was used to determine departure from expectations at different neighborhood distances. Tree positions are clumped at all investigated scales in all 37 studied species, while the diameters of most species are spatially negatively correlated, especially at short distances. Interestingly, all three cases showing short-distance attraction of dbh marks are associated with light-demanding shrub species. The short-distance attraction of dbh marks indicates spatially aggregated cohorts of stems of similar size. The percentage of species showing significant dbh suppression peaked at a 4 m distance under the heterogeneous Poisson model. At scales exceeding the peak distance, the percentage of species showing significant dbh suppression decreases sharply with increasing distances. The evidence from this large observational study shows that some of the variation of the spatial characteristics of tree diameters is related variations of topography and soil chemistry. However, an obvious interpretation of this result is still lacking. Thus, removing competitors surrounding the target trees is an effective way to avoid neighboring competition effects reducing the growth of valuable target trees in forest management practice.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available