The nurse-plant effect under the dislodgement stress of landslides

doi:10.3832/ifor4017-015

The nurse-plant effect under the dislodgement stress of landslides

Jian-Hong Yang^(1-2), Li-Wan Chang⁽³⁾, Kai-Chi Hsu⁽¹⁾, Chia-Cheng Fan⁽⁴⁾, David Doley⁽⁵⁾, Guo-Zhang Michael Song⁽¹⁾

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry, Volume 16, Issue 2, Pages 78-85 (2023)
doi: https://doi.org/10.3832/ifor4017-015
Published: Mar 16, 2023 - Copyright © 2023 SISEF

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While the mitigating effects of trees on shallow landslide occurrence are well recognised, the impact of landslides on tree community structure and tree-tree interactions have received much less research attention. The structures of tree communities before and after landslides were compared in a 25-ha subtropical forest plot. Tree-tree interactions were examined by analysing the pre- and post-landslide spatial point patterns of large (DBH ≥ 20 cm) and small (1 cm ≤ DBH < 20 cm) tree cohorts. In landslide scarps, 35 (34%) of 104 large trees and 467 (13%) of 3.072 small trees survived. Large (L) and small (S) tree cohorts were paired together for spatial analyses, including pre-landslide (_PL) (L_PL-S_PL), surviving (_S) (L_S-S_S), and missing (_M) large-small tree paired cohorts (L_M-S_M). We randomly selected trees from the pre-landslide tree cohorts to create two virtual paired cohorts, the L_34%-S_13% and L_66%-S_87% paired cohorts, whose population sizes were identical to the field-observed L_S-S_S and L_M-S_M paired cohorts respectively, but with random spatial patterns. Post-landslide survival rates of trees increased monotonically with DBH. Large trees dislodged by landslides scarcely reduced small-tree survival. Evidence for this included: (i) the distance from small trees to the nearest large trees of the L_M-S_M paired cohort did not differ significantly from that of the virtual L_66%-S_87% paired cohort; (ii) survival rates of small trees near L_M individuals did not differ significantly from those without large trees nearby. Surviving large trees had positive effects on the survival of small trees, indicated by: (i) the distance from small trees to the nearest large trees of the L_S-S_S paired cohort was significantly lower than that of the virtual L_34%-S_13% paired cohort; (ii) S_S individuals clumped around L_Sindividuals, whereas the virtual L_34%-S_13% spatial relationship was random. Large trees prevent landslide dislodgement of adjacent small trees through the nurse-plant effect. Our study suggests that landslide damage in sloping forests may be reduced simply by constantly maintaining a critical density of large trees.

Keywords

Facilitation, Forest Dynamics Plot, Nurse-plant Effect, Point Pattern Analysis, Slope Stability

Authors’ address

(1)

0000-0002-9266-3690
Department of Soil and Water Conservation, National Chung Hsing University, 145 Xingda Rd., South Dist., Taichung City 402 (Taiwan)

(2)

Botanical Garden Division, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, No.67 Sanyuan St., Zhongzheng Dist., Taipei City 100051 (Taiwan)

(3)

Forest Protection Division, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, No.67 Sanyuan St., Zhongzheng Dist., Taipei City 100051 (Taiwan)

(4)

Department of Construction Engineering, National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, No.1, University Rd., Yanchao Dist., Kaohsiung City 824 (Taiwan)

(5)

0000-0001-9430-6761
Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld 4072 (Australia)

Corresponding author

Guo-Zhang Michael Song
mikegzsong@gmail.com

Citation

Yang J-H, Chang L-W, Hsu K-C, Fan C-C, Doley D, Song G-ZM (2023). The nurse-plant effect under the dislodgement stress of landslides. iForest 16: 78-85. - doi: 10.3832/ifor4017-015

Academic Editor

Giorgio Vacchiano

Paper history

Received: Nov 11, 2021
Accepted: Dec 18, 2022

First online: Mar 16, 2023
Publication Date: Apr 30, 2023
Publication Time: 2.93 months

Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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