Abstract
Secondary lucidophyllous forest is one of the dominant forests in human-dominated subtropical/warm-temperate regions in East Asia. There were few direct monitoring techniques to elucidate the following hypotheses: (a) self-thinning may govern the stand development process and (b) wood production decline can be observed during secondary succession in a lucidophyllous forest. We conducted a long-term study at a permanent plot in central Japan, since 1989. The forest consists mainly of Castanopsis cuspidata in a canopy layer, Cleyera japonica, and Eurya japonica in a subtree layer. During the 28-year period, the basal area of the stand significantly increased due to the growth of C. cuspidata, from 29.18 ± 1.84 (87.8% of total) to 38.71 ± 2.22 m2 ha−1 (91.9%), while the stem density of C. cuspidata significantly decreased from 666 ± 13 to 404 ± 10 stems ha−1 in proportion to accumulating biomass (117.8 to 166.6 ton ha−1). The annual woody net primary production ranged from 2.40 ± 0.13 to 3.93 ± 0.33 ton ha−1 year−1 as a nearly 70-year-old forest. There was no age-related decline of woody net primary production (NPP) was found during secondary succession, and the growth of individual tree still increased when the self-thinning process governed the stand.
Highlights
Lucidophyllous forests are distributed widely in the subtropical and warm-temperate regions of East Asia [1]
Castanopsis cuspidata was the most abundant overstory tree species in basal area (BA) (87.76%), while Cleyera japonica was the most dominant understory subtree species based on stem number followed by Eurya japonica (Table 1, Figure 2a–c)
A predominance of the tree C. cuspidata accompanied a decrease in tree density (Figure 3) during the 28-year study, which was consistent with our hypothesis
Summary
Lucidophyllous (evergreen broad-leaved) forests are distributed widely in the subtropical and warm-temperate regions of East Asia [1]. There have been several long-term studies that investigated the structure and the dynamics of the unique forests using large permanent quadrats in southwestern Japan; e.g., Aya Research Site from 1989 [4,5,6] or Tatera Forest reserve from 1990 [7,8,9]. These studies have revealed that diverse gap-forming processes created environmental heterogeneity in the forest floor and contributed to the maintenance of the species-rich evergreen broad-leaved forests.
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