Journal
ANNALS OF FOREST SCIENCE
Volume 75, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
SPRINGER FRANCE
DOI: 10.1007/s13595-017-0681-7
Keywords
Climate change; Herb layer; Stable carbon isotope; Functional traits; Diversity
Categories
Funding
- DFG Priority Program [1374, WE4598/3-1, GE1090/11-1, BR1698/16-1]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Key message Understory plant communities are essential for the recruitment of trees making up future forests. Independent of plant diversity, the understory across different forest ecosystems shows considerable physiological acclimation and structural stability towards drought events, which are expected to occur more frequently in future. Context Understory plant communities are essential for the recruitment of trees making up the future forest. It is so far poorly understood how climate change will affect understory in beech and conifer forests managed at different intensity levels. Aims We hypothesized that drought would affect transpiration and carbon isotope discrimination but not species richness and diversity. Moreover, we assumed that forest management intensity will modify the responses to drought of the understory community. Methods We set up roofs in forests with a gradient of management intensities (unmanaged beech-managed beech-intensively managed conifer forests) in three regions across Germany. A drought event close to the 2003 drought was imposed in two consecutive years. Results After 2 years, the realized precipitation reduction was between 27% and 34%. The averaged water content in the top 20 cm of the soil under the roof was reduced by 2% to 8% compared with the control. In the 1st year, leaf level transpiration was reduced for different functional groups, which scaled to community transpiration modified by additional effects of drought on functional group leaf area. Acclimation effects in most functional groups were observed in the 2nd year. Conclusion Forest understory shows high plasticity at the leaf and community level, and high structural stability to changing climate conditions with drought events.
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