From the stand scale to the landscape scale: predicting the spatial patterns of forest regeneration after disturbance.

Shifting disturbance regimes can have cascading effects on many ecosystems processes. This is particularly true when the scale of the disturbance no longer matches the regeneration strategy of the dominant vegetation. In the yellow pine and mixed conifer forests of California, over a century of fire exclusion and the warming climate are increasing the incidence and extent of stand-replacing wildfire; such changes in severity patterns are altering regeneration dynamics by dramatically increasing the distance from live tree seed sources. This has raised concerns about limitations to natural reforestation and the potential for conversion to non-forested vegetation types, which in turn has implications for shifts in many ecological processes and ecosystem services. We used a California region-wide data set with 1,848 plots across 24 wildfires in yellow pine and mixed conifer forests to build a spatially explicit habitat suitability model for forecasting postfire forest regeneration. To model the effect of seed availability, the critical initial biological filter for regeneration, we used a novel approach to predicting spatial patterns of seed availability by estimating annual seed production from existing basal area and burn severity maps. The probability of observing any conifer seedling in a 60-m2 area (the field plot scale) was highly dependent on 30-yr average annual precipitation, burn severity, and seed availability. We then used this model to predict regeneration probabilities across the entire extent of a "new" fire (the 2014 King Fire), which highlights the spatial variability inherent in postfire regeneration patterns. Such forecasts of postfire regeneration patterns are of importance to land managers and conservationists interested in maintaining forest cover on the landscape. Our tool can also help anticipate shifts in ecosystem properties, supporting researchers interested in investigating questions surrounding alternative stable states, and the interaction of altered disturbance regimes and the changing climate.

Spatial patterns and interspecific associations among trees at different stand development stages in the natural secondary forests on the Loess Plateau, China.

Quercus wutaishansea populations on the Loess Plateau are currently becoming more dominant in natural secondary forests, whereas Pinus tabulaeformis is declining. In the present paper, the diameter class (instead of age) was used to classify the different growth stages as juvenile, subadult, or adult, and the univariate function g(r) was used to analyze the dynamic changes in spatial patterns and interspecific associations in three 1-ha tree permanent plots on the Loess Plateau, NW China. Our results suggested that the niche breadth changed with the development stage. The diameter distribution curve was consistent with the inverted "J" type, indicating that natural regeneration was common in all three plots. There was a close relationship between the spatial pattern and scale, which showed significant aggregation at small distances, and became more random as distance increased, but in the Pinus + Quercus mixed forests, the whole species were aggregated at distances up to 50 m. The degree of spatial clumping decreased from juvenile to subadult and from subadult to adult. The spatial pattern also differed at different growth stages, likely due to strong intraspecific competition. Associations among different growth stages were positively correlated at small scales. Our study is important to the understanding of the development of the Q. wutaishansea forests; thus, the spatial dynamic change features should be received greater attention when planning forest management and developing restoration strategies on the Loess Plateau.

The influence of preparation method on measured carbon fractions in tree tissues.

Carbon fractions of tree tissues are a key component of forest carbon mass estimation. Several methods have been used to measure carbon fractions, yet no comprehensive comparison between methods has been performed. We found significant differences between carbon fractions derived from four sample preparation methods: oven-drying, vacuum desiccation, freeze-drying, and a new method that consisted of (i) not drying samples, (ii) cutting samples instead of grinding them, (iii) measuring carbon content of samples, (iv) oven-drying remaining sample material and (v) using mass measurements of remaining sample material before and after oven-drying to adjust measured carbon fraction values to an oven-dry basis (minimize the loss of carbon (MLC) method). Oven-drying, freeze-drying and vacuum desiccation resulted in lower average carbon fraction estimates than the MLC method, suggesting that they do not capture as much of the carbon present in tree tissues. Further analysis showed significant, though small, differences in carbon fractions between powdered samples and samples excised from tree core segments with a razor blade. Powdered samples were found to have lower carbon fractions than the excised samples, indicating that some carbon is lost when samples are powdered instead of cut. Utilization of the MLC method captured an average of 1.4% more carbon on an oven-drying basis than freeze-drying, the next best method. Additionally, when applied to different tree tissue types, these methods measured different volatile carbon fractions, indicating that studies attempting to quantify volatile carbon and total carbon fraction in trees should measure all tissue types present.

A genotyping protocol for multiple tissue types from the polyploid tree species Sequoia sempervirens (Cupressaceae).

PREMISE OF THE STUDY: Identifying clonal lineages in asexually reproducing plants using microsatellite markers is complicated by the possibility of nonidentical genotypes from the same clonal lineage due to somatic mutations, null alleles, and scoring errors. We developed and tested a clonal identification protocol that is robust to these issues for the asexually reproducing hexaploid tree species coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens). METHODS: Microsatellite data from four previously published and two newly developed primers were scored using a modified protocol, and clones were identified using Bruvo genetic distances. The effectiveness of this clonal identification protocol was assessed using simulations and by genotyping a test set of paired samples of different tissue types from the same trees. RESULTS: Data from simulations showed that our protocol allowed us to accurately identify clonal lineages. Multiple test samples from the same trees were identified correctly, although certain tissue type pairs had larger genetic distances on average. DISCUSSION: The methods described in this paper will allow for the accurate identification of coast redwood clones, facilitating future studies of the reproductive ecology of this species. The techniques used in this paper can be applied to studies of other clonal organisms as well.