Abstract
The study of density and growth of pine, birch and oak seedlings and saplings in canopy gaps in the urban boreal forest in Riga, Latvia, indicates that natural regeneration can increase diversity in small gaps caused by tree mortality, and can ensure conversion from even-aged pine forest. Abundant regeneration in small gaps showed that light (gap area) was only one of the factors affecting tree regeneration in the gaps. The depth of the O layer and pH were suggested to be important factors for the establishment and growth of pine and birch. For oak, the main factors for establishment and growth were favorable moisture, higher pH and N concentration. Knowledge of ecological factors affecting the establishment of seedlings and growth of saplings of the most common trees species in the urban boreal forest is needed to predict successional trajectories and to aid management.
Highlights
The concept of the urban forest is quite broad, but it can generally be considered woodland ecosystem remnants surviving from times before urban development, or created as natural areas [1]
In the urban forest, canopy gaps might be less important in promoting tree regeneration [8,9,10]
The only significant correlation of the gap area with seedling density was found for birch (r = ́0.523, p < 0.05), not using control plots in the analysis
Summary
The concept of the urban forest is quite broad, but it can generally be considered woodland ecosystem remnants surviving from times before urban development, or created as natural areas [1]. Natural tree regeneration in the urban forest can diversify the forest landscape, increasing the resilience of city environments in the time of global change [1,3]. In natural woodland the landscape is usually structurally and compositionally diverse (species composition, mixture, age structure and dead wood) on multiple scales due to natural disturbances (fires, storms, insects, pathogens, floods, animals) and subsequent succession [4,5,6]. Gaps in the forest canopy promote regeneration and growth of some tree species, increase heterogeneity of the forest floor and drive successional replacement in the tree canopy [7]. In the urban forest, canopy gaps might be less important in promoting tree regeneration [8,9,10]. The effect of the gap area on the diversity of the forest floor depends on the availability of specific niches for species, stohasticity, Forests 2015, 6, 4451–4461; doi:10.3390/f6124379 www.mdpi.com/journal/forests
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