Recovery of seedling community attributes during passive restoration of a tropical moist forest in Uganda
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Applied Vegetation Science
Abstract
There has been a debate about the effectiveness of passive restoration for recovering
tropical forests, but few studies quantify the success of passive restoration.
The aim of this study was to better understand tropical forest succession under
a passive restoration scenario. We compared floristic and functional attributes of
seedlings in a passively restored and an old-growth forest, and assessed the effect
of restoration age and distance from the old-growth forest on seedling attributes.
Location: Kibale National Park, western Uganda.
Methods: We measured seedlings in a passively restored and an old-growth forest in
2011, 2014 and 2017. We determined species diversity, structure and composition
and searched the literature for functional traits. We used generalized linear mixedeffects
models to compare seedling attributes between the restored and old-growth
forest and determine the influence of restoration age and distance from the oldgrowth
forest.
Results: Seedling species abundance, evenness, basal area and height were similar between
the restored and old-growth forest. Wood density and abundance of seedlings
of different dispersal modes, habitat types, fruit size categories, and regeneration
strategies were also similar between the restored and old-growth forest. However,
richness, diversity and composition of seedlings were different. We found a positive
effect of restoration age on species abundance and abundance of non-zoochorous,
medium-fruited, forest-dependent, non-pioneer light demander and shade-tolerant
species, and a negative effect on evenness, wood density, abundance of pioneers and
compositional dissimilarity. Basal area of seedlings and the abundance of zoochorous
and forest-dependent species declined while compositional dissimilarity increased
with distance from the old-growth forest.
Conclusions: Our results provide empirical evidence on the potential of passive restoration
to recover the structure and functionality of tropical forests in a relatively
short period of time. We demonstrate that the effect of restoration age and distance
from the old-growth forest is not straightforward and depends on the attributes
measured.
Description
Keywords
Disturbance, Functional composition, Natural regeneration, Restoration success, Species composition, Successional trajectory, Tropical forests
Citation
Ssekuubwa, E., van Goor, W., Snoep, M., Riemer, K., Wanyama, F., & Tweheyo, M. (2021). Recovery of seedling community attributes during passive restoration of a tropical moist forest in Uganda. Applied Vegetation Science, 24(1), e12559. https://doi.org/10.1111/avsc.12559