Forest dynamics and agents that initiate and expand canopy gaps in Picea–Abies forests of Crawford Notch, New Hampshire, USA

Abstract

Summary Data from elevations ranging from mixed hardwood‐conifer forest at 600 m to subalpine Abies balsamea forest at 1120 m indicate that canopy gaps are not static but expand over time due to mortality of trees at the gap margin and coalescence of gaps. Gap expansion is more frequent than gap initiation. Ultimately such disturbance patches may become more extensive than is normally considered as typical of gap‐phase disturbance, but the processes of development are the same. Disturbance agents involved in gap initiation tend to differ from those involved in gap expansion. Spruce beetle, dwarf mistletoe and most root diseases predominate as agents of gap initiation, while windthrow/windsnap, chronic wind stress and Armillaria root disease are important agents of gap expansion. Concepts of equilibrium gap‐phase dynamics and a shifting‐mosaic steady state do not fully account for the dynamics of these spruce‐fir forests. A spruce beetle outbreak in the late 1970s/early 1980s killed most of a cohort of dominant, emergent Picea rubens. This epidemic initiated a long‐term cycle of disturbance and release that is likely to be repeated in many years when a new cohort of P. rubens becomes sufficiently large to sustain another major bark beetle outbreak. Episodic disturbance agents affect long‐lived, dominant species at infrequent but regular intervals (up to hundreds of years) and operate at the landscape level. Gap‐phase cycles appear to be nested within the long‐term cycle. Over the long term, episodic disturbance drives such ‘nested bicycle’ dynamics. Spatial and temporal distribution of disturbance results not only from stochastic events such as storms, but also from host specificity of agents of disturbance, their tendency to attack certain age classes of trees, local and regional contagion, and susceptibility of trees at the edge of disturbance patches.