Climate and site characteristics affect juvenile trembling aspen development in conifer plantations across southern British Columbia

Abstract

In southern British Columbia, juvenile trembling aspen is managed primarily as a competitor with conifers rather than for its ecological and economic value. As a result, brushing treatments have been applied on a widespread basis and this practice is likely to continue in the near future. Given the potential for climate change to affect our valuation of aspen, we require a better understanding of factors that affect its development, its competitive ability with conifers and its responses to brushing. We used data from 11 aspen management experiments to examine the influence of climate and site factors on aspen height, cover, and density in 17–24 year-old control stands and 9–16 years after manual cutting or girdling. Models explained 64% and 89% of the variation in aspen height in control and manually brushed stands, respectively, but were poor for girdling. Increasing length of the frost-free period was associated with increasing aspen height in control stands, whereas drier summer conditions on cool aspects favoured height growth of aspen suckers following manual cutting. We also examined the influence of climate and site factors on three simple competition indices that describe the height and density of aspen relative to conifer height, and then tested how well these indices predicted conifer growth. The density of aspen taller than conifers accounted for 39% of the variation in lodgepole pine diameter and the ratio of aspen/conifer height accounted for 33% of the variation in Douglas-fir height, suggesting that aspen competition was only moderately important to conifer growth. Our findings imply that aspen may become more productive with warmer summers provided it is not limited by summer moisture availability and that mixed stand management is a viable option in southern interior stands.