Journal
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
Volume 262, Issue 10, Pages 1913-1918Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.foreco.2011.02.016
Keywords
Scots pine; Thinning; Throughfall; Canopy structure
Categories
Funding
- Czech Ministry of Agriculture [MZE-0002070203]
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Climate change towards a warmer and dryer vegetation period may negatively impact growing conditions for Scots pine monocultures situated on dry, sandy soils in Central Europe. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effect of thinning on precipitation throughfall in young Scots pine stands on typical pine sites. In 1992, observation of precipitation and throughfall started at the Tyniste research site (lowland of Eastern Bohemia) in a 7-year-old pine stand planted in rows at a stocking of ca 10,000 trees ha(-1). Throughfall was measured at weekly intervals during the growing season (April-September) by gauges randomly located in two treat ments - variant 1C - Control without thinning and variant 2T - Thinned - and compared to precipitation at an open space outside of the canopy. The results demonstrated the positive effects of heavy low thinning (removal of 47% of the total number of trees and 31% of total pre-treatment basal area) on the water supply of young Scots pine stands. On the Thinned treatment, throughfall increased by 2-8% compared to Control plot. This positive effect persisted for six years after the first canopy reduction and the differences were significant for the first four years after thinning. After the second treatment (high thinning), throughfall on the Thinned treatment showed a nominal, but statistically insignificant increase. The likely reason for this result is that the application of a different type of thinning increased the variability of the canopy and, consequently, the effect of released crowns could not be detected. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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