Abstract
Active restoration through silvicultural treatments (enrichment planting, cutting climbers and liberation thinning) is considered an important intervention in logged forests. However, its ability to enhance regeneration is key for long-term recovery of logged forests, which remains poorly understood, particularly for the production and survival of seedlings in subsequent generations. To understand the long-term impacts of logging and restoration we tracked the diversity, survival and traits of seedlings that germinated immediately after a mast fruiting in North Borneo in unlogged and logged forests 30–35 years after logging. We monitored 5119 seedlings from germination for ~1.5 years across a mixed landscape of unlogged forests (ULs), naturally regenerating logged forests (NR) and actively restored logged forests via rehabilitative silvicultural treatments (AR), 15–27 years after restoration. We measured 14 leaf, root and biomass allocation traits on 399 seedlings from 15 species. Soon after fruiting, UL and AR forests had higher seedling densities than NR forest, but survival was the lowest in AR forests in the first 6 months. Community composition differed among forest types; AR and NR forests had lower species richness and lower evenness than UL forests by 5–6 months post-mast but did not differ between them. Differences in community composition altered community-weighted mean trait values across forest types, with higher root biomass allocation in NR relative to UL forest. Traits influenced mortality ~3 months post-mast, with more acquisitive traits and relative aboveground investment favoured in AR forests relative to UL forests. Our findings of reduced seedling survival and diversity suggest long time lags in post-logging recruitment, particularly for some taxa. Active restoration of logged forests recovers initial seedling production, but elevated mortality in AR forests lowers the efficacy of active restoration to enhance recruitment or diversity of seedling communities. This suggests current active restoration practices may fail to overcome barriers to regeneration in logged forests, which may drive long-term changes in future forest plant communities.
Original language | English |
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Article number | e17209 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Global Change Biology |
Volume | 30 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Mar 2024 |
Bibliographical note
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONSDavid C. Bartholomew: Conceptualization; formal analysis; investigation; methodology; project administration; visualization; writing – original draft; writing – review and editing. Robin Hayward: Formal analysis; methodology; visualization; writing – original draft; writing – review and editing. David F. R. P. Burslem: Conceptualization; funding acquisition; methodology; supervision; writing – review and editing. Paulo R. L. Bittencourt: Conceptualization; investigation; methodology; writing – review and editing. Daniel Chapman: Formal analysis; writing – review and editing. Mohd. Aminur Faiz Bin Suis: Project administration. Reuben Nilus: Project administration. Michael J. O'Brien: Conceptualization; investigation; methodology; project administration; writing – review and editing. Glen Reynolds: Project administration. Lucy Rowland: Conceptualization; funding acquisition; methodology; supervision; writing – review and editing. Lindsay F. Banin: Conceptualization; funding acquisition; methodology; supervision; writing – review and editing. Daisy Dent: Conceptualization; funding acquisition; methodology; supervision; writing – review and editing.
Data Availability Statement
The data that support the findings are available at: Burslem et al. (2022a, 2022b).Keywords
- demography
- disturbance
- diversity
- fruiting
- functional traits
- general masting
- lowland tropical forests
- mortality
- restoration
- selective logging