Soil seed banks provide a storage effect in post-logging regrowth forests of southeastern Australia

A Singh; CR Nitschke; FKC Hui; P Baker; S Kasel

Journal article

Soil seed banks provide a storage effect in post-logging regrowth forests of southeastern Australia

A Singh, CR Nitschke, FKC Hui, P Baker, S Kasel

Forest Ecology and Management | ELSEVIER | Published : 2023

DOI: 10.1016/j.foreco.2023.121389

Abstract

Despite the importance of soil seed banks in diversity maintenance, our understanding of plant response to changes in resource availability is largely limited to above-ground vegetation. We investigated how forest structure and edaphic properties influenced the above-ground vegetation and soil seed banks following logging in montane regrowth forests dominated by Eucalyptus regnans in the Central Highlands of southeastern Australia. We surveyed above-ground vegetation, soil seed banks, forest structure and soil properties across 20 harvest units, aged 16 to 20 years. A total of 80 species were identified in above-ground vegetation with 72 species in the soil seed bank, with only 34% of specie..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Craig Nitschke Author

Patrick Baker Author

Sabine Kasel Author

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Australian Research Council (LP140100580 to CN and PJB, FT120100715 to PJB). AS was supported by the University of Melbourne through a Melbourne Research Scholarship. CN and SK were additionally funded through the Integrated Forest Ecosystem Research (IFER) program of the Victoria government Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, agreement number 301103. Additional funding was generously provided to AS, SK and CN by Eucalypt Australia. We would like to thank Benjamin Smith, Benjamin Wagner, Carola Pritzkow, Linda Parker, Zheng Zhang, Thiet Van Nguyen, and Kaitlyn Hammond for their help with the field work. We thank two reviewers for comments that improved the manuscript.