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Response diversity, functional redundancy, and post-logging productivity in northern temperate and boreal forests

Summary

Published in Ecological Applications 28(5): 1282-1291. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.1727

The development of efficient ecosystem resilience indicators was identified as one of the key research priorities in the improvement of existing sustainable forest management frameworks. Two indicators of tree diversity associated with ecosystem functioning have recently received particular attention in the literature: functional redundancy (FR) and response diversity (RD). We examined how these indicators could be used to predict post-logging productivity in forests of Québec, Canada. We analysed the relationships between pre-logging FR and RD, as measured with sample plots, and post-logging productivity, measured as seasonal variation in enhanced vegetation index obtained from MODIS satellite imagery. The effects of the deciduous and coniferous tree components in our pre-disturbance diversity assessments were isolated in order to examine the hypothesis that they have different impacts on post-disturbance productivity. We also examined the role of tree species richness and species identity effects. Our analysis revealed the complementary nature of traditional biodiversity indicators and trait-based approaches in the study of biodiversity-ecosystem-functioning relationships in dynamic ecosystems. We report a significant and positive relationship between pre-disturbance deciduous RD and post-disturbance productivity, as well as an unexpected significant negative effect of coniferous RD on productivity. This negative relationship with post-logging productivity likely results from slower coniferous regeneration speeds and from the relatively short temporal scale examined. Negative black-spruce-mediated identity effects were likely associated with increased stand vulnerability to paludification and invasion by ericaceous shrubs that slow down forest regeneration. Response diversity outperformed functional redundancy as a measure of post-disturbance productivity most likely due to the stand-replacing nature of the disturbance considered. To the best of our knowledge, this is among the first studies to report a negative significant relationship between a component of RD and ecosystem functioning, namely coniferous RD and forest ecosystem productivity after a stand-replacing disturbance.

Sector(s): 

Forests

Categorie(s): 

Scientific Article

Theme(s): 

Forest Ecology, Forestry Research, Forests

Departmental author(s): 

Bouchard, Mathieu

Author(s)

CORREIA, David Laginha Pinto, Frédéric RAULIER, Mathieu BOUCHARD and Élise FILOTAS

Year of publication :

2018

Format :

PDF available upon request

Keywords :

forest ecology, coniferous trees, deciduous trees, disturbances, ecosystem functioning, functional diversity, insects and diseases, forestry research scientific article

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