Dalby Söderskog revisited: long-term vegetation changes in a south Swedish deciduous forest

Publikation: Beiträge in ZeitschriftenZeitschriftenaufsätzeForschungbegutachtet

Authors

In this study, we report on 67 years of secondary succession in the temperate deciduous forest Dalby Söderskog, southern Sweden. In 2002 vegetation analyses were conducted in 74 systematically distributed plots and the results compared with similar investigations during the years 1935, 1969 and 1976. Additionally, a floristic survey of the forest was made and compared with inventories of the years 1925, 1935 and 1970. From 1970 to 2002, overall species richness of the forest continued to decline, but at a lower rate than before. In 2002, for the first time, shade-tolerant forest species constituted the largest group. In the upper tree layer Fraxinus excelsior became the most important species, at the expense of Quercus robur and Ulmus glabra. In the herb layer, no changes in total or mean species richness were exhibited at plot scale between 1976 and 2002. In contrast to the lack of quantitative changes in species richness, we observed major changes in species composition at the plot level. In particular, the former dominant species Mercurialis perennis had declined markedly. After release from a historical regime of livestock grazing and irregular cuttings, the predicted steady-state community dominated by Ulmus and Mercurialis only prevailed for a few decades before unexpected external events, in this particular case Dutch elm disease and invasion by the slug Arion lusitanicus, initiated a successional change. We conclude that unexpected diseases or pests or rare climatic extremes can play a decisive role in forest dynamics and strongly interact with more gradual autogenic changes of forest structure and composition.

OriginalspracheEnglisch
ZeitschriftActa Oecologica
Jahrgang31
Ausgabenummer2
Seiten (von - bis)229-242
Anzahl der Seiten14
ISSN1146-609X
DOIs
PublikationsstatusErschienen - 01.03.2007

Bibliographische Notiz

Funding Information:
We would like to thank Bill Loneragan and one anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. This study was financed by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the University of Lüneburg.

DOI

Zuletzt angesehen

Forschende

  1. Laura Schimpf

Aktivitäten

  1. Zeitschrift für Fremdsprachenforschung (Fachzeitschrift)
  2. „Gemeinsam sind wir stark“: zur Arbeit in Theorie-Praxis-Netzwerken in der Lehrkräftebildung
  3. 3rd IRTG-Autumn School of Psychobiology 2009
  4. Nationale Forschungsuniversität - Higher School of Economics
  5. College (Organisation)
  6. Integration als Gelingensbedingung transdisziplinärer Kooperationen in der Lehrkräftebildung
  7. Fakultät Management und Technologie (Organisation)
  8. Vernetzungstreffen der SÖF-Forschungsgruppen
  9. Wellness as a Hybrid Phenomenon
  10. Mute Books (Verlag)
  11. "Der Reichsbote" 1873-1890
  12. Fakultät Bildung (Organisation)
  13. Fakultät Staatswissenschaften (Organisation)
  14. Long Range Planning (Fachzeitschrift)
  15. Master i Miljø- og Energiret (MEEL), Legal Systems & Wind Energy - A Comparative Perspective, Sandbjerg Gods - 2013
  16. Global Economic Symposium - GES 2013
  17. Autocratic Adaptation, Autocratic Legacies and Fundamentalist Islam in Niger
  18. Weiterbildung zur Elternkurs-Trainerin „Macht euch stark für starke Kinder“
  19. Fakultät Management und Technologie (Organisation)
  20. BA Seminar: Theories of Contemporary Society II
  21. Syncretism in the study of contemporary art from the Americas
  22. Tiere und wir: Die Mensch-Tier Studien als ethische Herausforderung
  23. Journal of AOAC International (Zeitschrift)
  24. Vortrag: Aufgabenkultur im Unterricht: Eine Video- und Interviewstudie an Hauptschulen.
  25. American Sociological Association’s 111th Annual Meeting
  26. Fostering pre-service teachers’ professional vision with online video analysis and feedback [Conference canceled]