Can native clonal moso bamboo encroach on adjacent natural forest without human intervention?

Shangbin Bai,Nan Wang,Richard T Conant,Yong Xu,Juan Chen,Feiyan Fang,Yixiang Wang,Guomo Zhou

doi:10.1038/srep31504

Abstract

Native species are generally thought not to encroach on adjacent natural forest without human intervention. However, the phenomenon that native moso bamboo may encroach on surrounding natural forests by itself occurred in China. To certificate this encroaching process, we employed the transition front approach to monitor the native moso bamboo population dynamics in native Chinese fir and evergreen broadleaved forest bordering moso bamboo forest in Tianmu Mountain Nature Reserve during the period between 2005 and 2014. The results showed that the bamboo front moved toward the Chinese fir/evergreen broadleaved stand with the new bamboo produced yearly. Moso bamboo encroached at a rate of 1.28 m yr−1 in Chinese fir forest and 1.04 m yr−1 in evergreen broadleaved forest, and produced 533/437 new culms hm−2 yr−1 in the encroaching natural Chinese fir/evergreen broadleaved forest. Moso bamboo coverage was increasing while adjacent natural forest area decreasing continuously. These results indicate that native moso bamboo was encroaching adjacent natural forest gradually without human intervention. It should be considered to try to create a management regime that humans could selectively remove culms to decrease encroachment.

Highlights

The invasion of exotic species has become a global problem and received increasing attention[1,2]
Ding et al.[17] reported that the area of moso bamboo forests increased dramatically at the speed of 4.47 hm[2] yr−1 from 1985 to 2003 occupied the space of surrounding natural forests in Tianmu Mountain National Nature Reserve of Zhejiang Province by using remote sensing and ascribe to few human disturbance for the moso bamboo area expansion, but no information is about the encroachment process
As a native species in China, whether moso bamboo can encroach on adjacent natural forest eliminating human support is still lack of information at individual and stand level based on long-term continuous observation

Summary

Introduction

The invasion of exotic species has become a global problem and received increasing attention[1,2]. The study of invasions of bamboo in Japan has primarily relied on retrospective methods which are inherently biased toward introduced earlier[12] It is not clear whether the expansion of moso bamboo founded in Japan is a result of human activities or its exotic that made it become invasive. As a native species in China, whether moso bamboo can encroach on adjacent natural forest eliminating human support is still lack of information at individual and stand level based on long-term continuous observation. Given such limited research, uncertainly remains over the expansion propensity of moso bamboo. We addressed these objectives by monitoring the location of new bamboo produced in the bamboo edge zone with two adjacent forest types (Chinese fir and evergreen broadleaved forest respectively) every year during the period 2005 to 2014

Methods

Results

Conclusion