The datasets stored here span nearly four decades of permanent plot data with multiple inventories across a network of old-growth forest remnants in Slovenia. Most of these permanent plots were initially established by Prof. Dušan Mlinšek and colleagues in the early 1980s in an effort to better understand the long-term dynamics of natural forests, while several other plots were established more recently. These old-growth remnants are mainly characterized by mixed mesic temperate mountain forests, dominated by Fagus sylvatica and sometimes Abies alba. A variety of other less shade tolerant species coexist in these forests, but occur at sporadically. The forest reserves have typical old-growth characteristics (canopy trees ) 300 years old), with little to no signs of past anthropogenic disturbance, although they are all under the influence of heavy browsing pressure, and air pollution may have caused elevated mortality in the 70s and 80s.The current network includes 18 plots, totalling around 13 ha, across 11 old-growth remnants. All of the plots have been censused at least two times, while some have been measured up to five times. The dataset allows calculation of basic changes in stand structure and composition, as well as demographic rates, including recruitment, growth, and mortality rates.
COBISS.SI-ID: 5637542
There is concern in the scientific community and among forest managers about potential reductions in the provisioning of forest ecosystem services due to the loss of tree species diversity. Many studies have shown how species diversity influences forest functioning, especially productivity, but the influence of structural diversity, such as tree size heterogeneity, has received much less attention. This study focused on understanding the relationship between stand productivity and several structural characteristics of spruce-fir-beech mountain forest stands in Europe. We used a dataset of 89 long-term plots in spruce-fir-beech forests distributed along the European mountains where the three species, Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.), silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) and European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.), represent at least 75% of the basal area. Site-dependent conditions were accounted for in a linear mixed-effect basic model, which related the stand productivity with the morphological, climatic and pedological characteristics. The influence of tree species diversity, tree size heterogeneity, species size dominance, and species overlapping in the size distribution on stand productivity was analysed by adding variables to the basic model one by one and evaluating the change in the Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC).
COBISS.SI-ID: 5592486