TREE MORTALITY AND RECRUITMENT IN A SUBTROPICAL BROADLEAVED MONSOON FOREST IN SOUTH CHINA

Abstract

BIN Y, LIAN J, WANG Z, YE W & CAO H. 2011. Tree mortality and recruitment in a subtropical broadleaved monsoon forest in south China. Mortality and recruitment are key factors influencing forest succession. Using spatial pattern and neighbourhood analyses, effects of conspecifics and heterospecifics upon mortality and recruitment of some locally dominant tree species were investigated in a 1-ha forest plot. Specifically, we were interested in how species in different layers of the forest responded to such effects in a subtropical forest in China. During a seven-year period (1992–1999), mortality rates of the studied species ranged from 2 to 7% per year while recruitment rates ranged from 0 to 3% per year. At this small spatial scale, mortality of all but one species was random in space. Unlike mortality, however, recruitment into the ≥1-cm size class consistently occurred where local conspecific density was high. This suggests that this process may be limited by seed dispersal. Heterospecific individuals did not influence recruitment significantly for any species. Both canopy species had difficulty recruiting into the ≥1-cm size class during the study period. In conclusion, tree mortality in this patch of forest was random and recruitment for six non-canopy species and two canopy species was possibly limited by seed availability and ecological needs respectively.