Article
Forestry
Mariusz Kormanek, Stanislaw Malek, Jacek Banach, Grzegorz Durlo
Summary: The quality of container-grown seedlings is influenced by the air and water properties of the substrate. Increase in substrate density leads to changes in air and water properties within containers, affecting different tree species in varying degrees. Precise control over water dosage during irrigation can reduce water consumption and improve seedling growth for certain species.
Article
Forestry
Agnes Foerster, Heike Culmsee, Christoph Leuschner
Summary: This study compared aboveground biomass carbon pools and net primary productivity of broadleaf forests with natural development to nearby pine forests in northern Germany, finding that pine forests had lower biomass carbon storage and ANPP compared to broadleaf forests due to differences in tree species.
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
(2021)
Article
Forestry
Geraud de Streel, Francois Lebourgeois, Christian Ammer, Ignacio Barbeito, Kamil Bielak, Andres Bravo-Oviedo, Gediminas Brazaitis, Lluis Coll, Catherine Collet, Miren del Rio, Jan Den Ouden, Lars Drossler, Michael Heym, Vaclav Hurt, Viktor Kurylyak, Magnus Lof, Fabio Lombardi, Bratislav Matovic, Renzo Motta, Leonid Osadchuk, Maciej Pach, M. G. Pereira, Hans Pretzsch, Roman Sitko, Jerzy Skrzyszewski, Vit Sramek, Miroslav Svoboda, Kris Verheyen, Tzvetan Zlatanov, Quentin Ponette
Summary: Increasing species diversity is seen as a potential strategy to mitigate the negative impacts of global change on forests. However, the effects of species mixing on climate-growth relationships and drought resistance in different climate conditions are not well-documented.
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
(2022)
Article
Forestry
Grzegorz Szewczyk, Wojciech Kraj, Bartosz Mitka, Piotr Bozek, Pawel Tylek
Summary: This study evaluated the impact of new and old platform mounting systems on tree vitality and found that although the new system caused more damage to the surface of tree trunks, it did not significantly affect tree vitality compared to the old system. Different types of trees reacted differently to injuries caused by platform installations, with pine trees showing a slight increase in vitality and beech trees experiencing a significant decrease. Despite the slightly worse overall state of the trees, the new system can be recommended for use in practice due to its advantages of being able to change positions and adjust clamping force in the long term.
Article
Forestry
Florian Achilles, Alexander Tischer, Markus Bernhardt-Romermann, Martin Heinze, Frank Reinhardt, Franz Makeschin, Beate Michalzik
Summary: The study shows that European beech has a positive impact on improving forest floor quality, resulting in more active humus formation and higher forest floor pH. Over the past 20 years, European beech has had a significant effect on bio-acidification of the subsoil, possibly contributing to the development of more acidic conditions.
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
(2021)
Article
Forestry
Geraud de Streel, Christian Ammer, Peter Annighoefer, Ignacio Barbeito, Kamil Bielak, Andres Bravo-Oviedo, Gediminas Brazaitis, Wlodzimierz Buraczyk, Catherine Collet, Vaclav Hurt, Viktor Kurylyak, Jan den Ouden, Maciej Pach, Hans Pretzsch, Jerzy Skrzyszewski, Vit Sramek, Jolanta Stankeviciute, Katarina Strelcova, Miroslav Svoboda, Kris Verheyen, Tzvetan Zlatanov, Quentin Ponette
Summary: Mixing different tree species has a positive effect on increasing the foliar nutrient content of trees, especially on nutrient-poor sites. The mixing effects on nutrients and balances varied between species, but were not consistently related to contrasting nutrient compositions. The site nutritional status influenced the mixing effect, with larger differences observed in rich soils rather than nutrient-poor soils.
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
(2021)
Article
Forestry
N. Korboulewsky, C. Heiniger, S. De Danieli, J. J. Brun
Summary: The study found that mixture of tree species can increase the diversity of Collembola, and the soil fauna response differs between lowland and mountain sites.
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
(2021)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Petr Svora, Sylwia Svorova Pawelkowicz, Petra Ecorchard, Jiri Plocek, Alena Schieberova, Zdenek Prosek, Petr Ptacek, Jan Posta, Piotr Targowski, Petr Kuklik, Ivo Jakubec
Summary: This study investigates the protection of wood against photodegradation by titanium dioxide (TiO2) coating and finds that TiO2 coating can provide limited protection against photodegradation.
Article
Forestry
Christoph Leuschner, Agnes Forster, Marco Diers, Heike Culmsee
Summary: Increasing temperatures and drought in northern Germany have shown that large-scale Scots pine plantations are not environmentally friendly or climate-smart. Replacing these with beech or other hardwood forests is urgently needed to enhance climate change mitigation potential.
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
(2022)
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Karl Friedrich Reich, Matthias Kunz, Goddert von Oheimb
Summary: In this study, a new structural heterogeneity index (SHITLS) based on 3D point clouds was introduced for quantifying the 3D features of forest structures. By using multiple scans from different positions, a better and higher resolution coverage of forest structures was achieved. Compared to existing stand structural complexity indices based on single scans, SHITLS showed a better ability to explain differences between different stand types.
ECOLOGICAL INDICATORS
(2021)
Article
Agronomy
Robert Jankowiak, Hanna Stepniewska, Piotr Bilanski, Stephen Joshua Taerum
Summary: This study aimed to isolate Phytophthora species and investigate their role in the decline of beech seedlings in Poland. A total of 1192 Phytophthora isolates were obtained from 300 symptomatic beech seedlings, and six species were identified. The most frequently isolated species were Phytophthora cactorum, P. x cambivora, P. europaea, and P. plurivora. The results demonstrate that Phytophthora may play an important role in the reduction of naturally regenerated European beech seedlings.
Article
Forestry
Florian Wilms, Nils Duppel, Tobias Cremer, Ferreol Berendt
Summary: The height of the bark transition area is significantly influenced by DBH, while cardinal direction has a minor effect on bark thickness. These variables can be used to predict timber volume accurately and estimate the carbon storage potential of forest biomass based on different tree compartments and compounds.
Article
Forestry
Marina Getino-Alvarez, Roberto San-Martin, Hans Pretzsch, Maciej Pach, Felipe Bravo, Maria-Belen Turrion
Summary: Healthy soils act as a significant carbon sink on Earth, with the potential to store carbon for long periods of time. This study focuses on assessing the carbon sequestration potential of mixed and pure stands of Scots pine and beech in forest soils. The findings indicate that the percentage of species mixture primarily impacts the forest floor, while the mineral soil is mainly affected by the total organic carbon. The microsite-level scale proves to be more appropriate in studying the effects of tree stand composition on soil organic matter.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF FOREST RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Forestry
Cristina Valeriano, Antonio Gazol, Michele Colangelo, Jesus Julio Camarero
Summary: The study reveals that drought constrains tree growth in regions like the western Mediterranean Basin, leading to tree mortality. Living and dead trees display significant differences in growth trends and responses to drought, particularly after the climate shifted towards warmer and drier conditions in the 1980s.
Article
Plant Sciences
Ferhat Kara, Seray Ozden Keles
Summary: Tree species richness (SR) and stand structural diversity (SSD) have positive influences on stand productivity, but our understanding of the relationships among productivity, species richness, and structural diversity is still uncertain. This study compared the productivity of three forest types to examine the influence of SR and SSD on productivity, and also explored their effects on the anatomical characteristics of fir trees.
Article
Agronomy
W. Marchand, A. Buechling, M. Rydval, V Cada, A. Stegehuis, A. Fruleux, M. Polacek, J. Hofmeister, J. Pavlin, D. Ralhan, M. Dusatko, P. Janda, M. Mikolas, O. Vostarek, R. Bace, M. Frankovic, D. Kozak, C-C Roibu, O. Chaskovskyy, S. Mikac, T. Zlatanov, M. Panayotov, A. Diku, E. Toromani, M. Svoboda
Summary: The demography of juvenile trees has a strong influence on the outcomes of global change for forests. Our study in Europe reveals the relationships between climate factors and growth rates in sapling trees of two dominant species, Norway spruce and European beech. We found that spruce has higher growth potential and is more sensitive to water availability, while beech is more tolerant of moisture limitation. Long-term warming may have positively affected juvenile tree growth, but future warming and drought may inhibit growth due to thermal thresholds and differential water stress tolerance.
AGRICULTURAL AND FOREST METEOROLOGY
(2023)
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Joerg Mueller, Oliver Mitesser, Marc W. Cadotte, Fons van der Plas, Akira S. Mori, Christian Ammer, Anne Chao, Michael Scherer-Lorenzen, Petr Baldrian, Claus Baessler, Peter Biedermann, Simone Cesarz, Alice Classen, Benjamin M. Delory, Heike Feldhaar, Andreas Fichtner, Torsten Hothorn, Claudia Kuenzer, Marcell K. Peters, Kerstin Pierick, Thomas Schmitt, Bernhard Schuldt, Dominik Seidel, Diana Six, Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter, Simon Thorn, Goddert von Oheimb, Martin Wegmann, Wolfgang W. Weisser, Nico Eisenhauer
Summary: Intensification of land use by humans has led to a homogenization of landscapes and decreasing resilience of ecosystems globally due to a loss of biodiversity, including the majority of forests. Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) research has provided compelling evidence for a positive effect of biodiversity on ecosystem functions and services at the local (alpha-diversity) scale, but we largely lack empirical evidence on how the loss of between-patch beta-diversity affects biodiversity and multifunctionality at the landscape scale (gamma-diversity).
GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Forestry
Marina Getino-Alvarez, Roberto San-Martin, Hans Pretzsch, Maciej Pach, Felipe Bravo, Maria-Belen Turrion
Summary: Healthy soils act as a significant carbon sink on Earth, with the potential to store carbon for long periods of time. This study focuses on assessing the carbon sequestration potential of mixed and pure stands of Scots pine and beech in forest soils. The findings indicate that the percentage of species mixture primarily impacts the forest floor, while the mineral soil is mainly affected by the total organic carbon. The microsite-level scale proves to be more appropriate in studying the effects of tree stand composition on soil organic matter.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF FOREST RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Forestry
Shamim Ahmed, Swapan Kumar Sarker, Daniel A. Friess, Md. Kamruzzaman, Martin Jacobs, Meriadec Sillanpaa, Clement Sullibie Saagulo Naabeh, Hans Pretzsch
Summary: Salinity-influenced ecosystems are projected to experience reduced tree growth at the stand level due to climate change. However, the eco-physiological and functional responses of large and small trees to increasing salinity are not well understood. In the Sundarbans mangrove forest in Bangladesh, we found that large-diameter trees primarily contribute to above-ground biomass (AGB) stocks, while small-diameter trees mainly contribute to AGB growth in higher salinity areas. Structural diversity positively influences AGB stocks and gain, while species diversity does not have a significant impact.
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
(2023)
Article
Forestry
Jelena Knezevic, Jusuf Music, Velid Halilovic, Admir Avdagic
Summary: The negative impact of timber harvesting on the forest environment is evident in the damage caused to the remaining trees, regeneration, and forest soil. This study focused on assessing the damage to residual trees during skidding using an LKT 81T cable skidder, taking place in an uneven-aged mixed fir and spruce forest in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. The results revealed that extraction operations resulted in damage to 6.31% of the residual trees, with bark removal being the most common type of damage (65.34%), primarily occurring at the lower parts of the trees (butt end - 55.11% and root collar - 32.39%).
Article
Forestry
Antonios Apostolakis, Ingo Schoening, Beate Michalzik, Christian Ammer, Peter Schall, Falk Haensel, Thomas Nauss, Susan Trumbore, Marion Schrumpf
Summary: In this study, forest and soil inventories were conducted in 150 temperate forest sites in three German landscapes, and in situ soil CO2 efflux was measured in early summer of 2018 and 2019. The results showed that forest structural properties had a significant impact on soil CO2 efflux, while forest composition had a minor effect. The study also found that under drought conditions, the influence of forest structural properties on soil CO2 efflux was mediated by fine root biomass.
Article
Forestry
Hans Pretzsch, Michael Heym, Torben Hilmers, Andres Bravo-Oviedo, Shamim Ahmed, Christian Ammer, Admir Avdagic, Kamil Bielak, Felipe Bravo, Gediminas Brazaitis, Marek Fabrika, Vaclav Hurt, Viktor Kurylyak, Magnus Lof, Maciej Pach, Quentin Ponette, Ricardo Ruiz-Peinado, Dejan Stojanovic, Miroslav Svoboda, Barbara Wolff, Tzvetan Zlatanov, Miren del Rio
Summary: Many studies have found that mixed species stands have higher gross growth compared to monocultures, but little is known about mortality in mixed stands. By evaluating different plots of Scots pine and European beech across Europe, this study found that mixed stands have higher mortality rates and lower net growth compared to monocultures. The study also showed that the mixing proportion of Scots pine decreased over time, indicating a tendency towards demixing due to pine.
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
(2023)
Article
Forestry
Gerhard Schmied, Hans Pretzsch, Dominik Ambs, Enno Uhl, Julia Schmucker, Julian Faeth, Peter Biber, Yves-Daniel Hoffmann, Muhidin Seho, Karl Heinz Mellert, Torben Hilmers
Summary: During the summer of 2022, an acute drought affected central and southern Europe, leading to early withering and defoliation of European beech trees in Germany. The crown defoliation varied among trees within the same forest stands, raising questions about the causal factors.
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Michal Bosela, Alvaro Rubio-Cuadrado, Peter Marcis, Katarina Merganicova, Peter Fleischer, David I. Forrester, Enno Uhl, Admir Avdagic, Michal Bellan, Kamil Bielak, Felipe Bravo, Lluis Coll, Klara Cseke, Miren del Rio, Lucian Dinca, Laura Dobor, Stanislaw Drozdowski, Francesco Giammarchi, Erika Gomoryova, Aida Ibrahimspahic, Milica Kasanin-Grubin, Matija Klopcic, Viktor Kurylyak, Fernando Montes, Maciej Pach, Ricardo Ruiz-Peinado, Jerzy Skrzyszewski, Branko Stajic, Dejan Stojanovic, Miroslav Svoboda, Giustino Tonon, Soraya Versace, Suzana Mitrovic, Tzvetan Zlatanov, Hans Pretzsch, Roberto Tognetti
Summary: This study used tree-ring width data and different modelling approaches to build predictive growth models and compared them to process-based models. The results showed that although there were some differences between the models, the prediction errors were small, indicating that both process-based and empirical models are effective for predicting tree growth. Furthermore, it was found that while climate factors have low sensitivity to tree growth, other factors such as tree size and soil have a significant impact.
SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
(2023)
Article
Forestry
Hans Pretzsch, Shamim Ahmed, Thomas Roetzer, Gerhard Schmied, Torben Hilmers
Summary: Drought effects on tree growth, mortality, stand density, size variation, and mixing proportions were studied in a 5-year throughfall exclusion experiment. The study found that drought-induced growth reduction and tree loss significantly decreased Stand Density Index (SDI) and mixing proportion at the expense of Norway spruce, homogenizing stand structure. Longer drought periods resulted in acclimation at different levels, from the stand to the species cohort, tree, and organ. Maintaining structural and compositional diversity may help mitigate drought stress effects on growth, mortality, and stand structure.
TREES-STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION
(2023)
Article
Soil Science
Estela Covre Foltran, Christian Ammer, Norbert Lamersdorf
Summary: An analysis of pure and mixed species stands in Germany showed that pure spruce stands had the lowest base saturation, while beech had the highest values. The impact of Douglas fir on soil chemistry depended on site conditions. Mixed stands had higher soil exchangeable K content and reduced base cation depletion compared to conifer stands.
Article
Ecology
Jonas Glatthorn, Scott Appleby, Niko Balkenhol, Peter Kriegel, Likulunga Emmanuel Likulunga, Jing-Zhong Lu, Dragan Matevski, Andrea Polle, Hannes Riebl, Carmen Alicia Rivera Perez, Stefan Scheu, Alexander Seinsche, Peter Schall, Andreas Schuldt, Severin Wingender, Christian Ammer
Summary: Cultivation of non-native tree species in managed forests has the potential to adapt to climate change, but the impacts on forest associates need to be considered. We found that non-native tree species in pure stands and mixed stands with native tree species have higher species diversity than native species in temperate Northwest Germany. However, the overall diversity of forest-floor-associated biota is not improved by cultivating non-native tree species in mixture with native tree species.
Article
Forestry
Dominik Ambs, Gerhard Schmied, Tzvetan Zlatanov, Sebastian Kienlein, Hans Pretzsch, Petia Simeonova Nikolova
Summary: A study was conducted to investigate the regeneration processes in mixed mountain forests in the Bulgarian Rhodopes under different management regimes. The results showed a high potential for recruitment in the Western Rhodopes, with highest regeneration density in fir, followed by spruce and beech. Single-tree selection cutting had the greatest influence on fir regeneration, while group-tree selection cutting tended to promote beech and spruce. Competing ground vegetation negatively affected seedling density of all species. Height increment was influenced by plant size, light conditions, and soil conditions.
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
(2024)