Faculty of Natural Sciences

TY - CHAP

T1 - Land-use history affects understorey plant species distributions in a large temperate-forest complex, Denmark

AU - Svenning, Jens Christian

AU - Baktoft, Karen H.

AU - Balslev, Henrik

PY - 2009/12/1

Y1 - 2009/12/1

N2 - In Europe, forests have been strongly influenced by human land-use for millennia. Here, we studied the importance of anthropogenic historical factors as determinants of understorey species distributions in a 967 ha Danish forest complex using 156 randomly placed 100-m 2 plots, 15 environmental, 9 spatial, and 5 historical variables, and principal components analysis (PCA), redundancy analysis (RDA) as well as indicator species analysis. The historical variables were status as ancient (1805 AD) high forest, reclaimed bogs, ≤100 m from Bronze Age burial mounds, or former conifer plantation, and stand age. The PCA results showed that the main gradients in species composition were strongly related to the explanatory variables. Forward variable selection and variation partitioning using RDA showed that although modern environment was the dominant driver of species composition, anthropogenic historical factors were also important. The pure historical variation fraction constituted 13% of the variation explained. The RDA results showed that ancient-forest status and, secondarily, reclaimed bog status were the only significant historical variables. Many typical forest interior species, with poor dispersal and a strong literature record as ancient-forest species, were still concentrated in areas that were high forest in 1805. Among the younger forests, there were clear floristic differences between those on reclaimed bogs and those not. Apparently remnant populations of wet-soil plants were still present in the reclaimed bog areas. Our results emphasize the importance of historical factors for understanding modern vegetation patterns in forested landscapes.

AB - In Europe, forests have been strongly influenced by human land-use for millennia. Here, we studied the importance of anthropogenic historical factors as determinants of understorey species distributions in a 967 ha Danish forest complex using 156 randomly placed 100-m 2 plots, 15 environmental, 9 spatial, and 5 historical variables, and principal components analysis (PCA), redundancy analysis (RDA) as well as indicator species analysis. The historical variables were status as ancient (1805 AD) high forest, reclaimed bogs, ≤100 m from Bronze Age burial mounds, or former conifer plantation, and stand age. The PCA results showed that the main gradients in species composition were strongly related to the explanatory variables. Forward variable selection and variation partitioning using RDA showed that although modern environment was the dominant driver of species composition, anthropogenic historical factors were also important. The pure historical variation fraction constituted 13% of the variation explained. The RDA results showed that ancient-forest status and, secondarily, reclaimed bog status were the only significant historical variables. Many typical forest interior species, with poor dispersal and a strong literature record as ancient-forest species, were still concentrated in areas that were high forest in 1805. Among the younger forests, there were clear floristic differences between those on reclaimed bogs and those not. Apparently remnant populations of wet-soil plants were still present in the reclaimed bog areas. Our results emphasize the importance of historical factors for understanding modern vegetation patterns in forested landscapes.

KW - Ancient woodland

KW - Ancient-forest indicator species

KW - Dispersal limitation

KW - Forest history

KW - Forest management

KW - Historical factors

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84900675092&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/978-90-481-2795-5_17

DO - 10.1007/978-90-481-2795-5_17

M3 - Book chapter

AN - SCOPUS:84900675092

SN - 9789048127948

SP - 221

EP - 234

BT - Forest Ecology

PB - Springer

ER -