Three decades of understorey vegetation change in Quercus-dominated forests as a result of increasing canopy mortality and global change symptoms

Questions

The long-term response of understorey vegetation to increasing tree mortality has rarely been addressed in resurvey studies. For two Quercus-dominated forest types, we asked: (a) How did overstorey alterations, induced by canopy mortality, affect understorey diversity and composition? (b) Is there a signal of global change effects on understorey communities? (c) Are these assemblages experiencing a homogenization process?

Location

Five sites in Quercus robur (QR) and four sites in Q. petraea (QP) forests, Slovenia.

Methods

We studied changes in vascular plants in the understorey layer from 1992/1993 to 2023 across 45 permanent 20 m × 20 m plots in QR and QP forests, respectively. Vegetation surveys were carried out following the standard Braun-Blanquet method. We compared original surveys with recent resurveys using multivariate analysis, ecological indicator values (EIV), plant traits and methods that quantify changes in individual species.

Results

Since the early 1990s, tree layer cover decreased from 95% to an average of 55% in QR, whereas it remained relatively high (77%) in QP plots. This resulted in denser understorey vegetation and a significant increase in plot-level species richness in QR forests, but a slight decrease in QP forests. The extensive loss of canopy cover and disturbance effects in QR forests caused significant changes in species composition. Species turnover in QR was driven by colonization of new disturbance-tolerant taxa characterized by ruderal traits, whereas the compositional shift in QP was to a greater extent due to species losses. We detected a process of vegetation thermophilization (increase in EIV-temperature), suggesting an effect of rapid climatic warming. Understorey communities are now more similar to each other than 30 years ago, indicating a decrease in beta-diversity (floristic homogenization).

Conclusions

Despite some common trends, vegetation responses were forest type-specific. Our study presents evidence of understorey vegetation changes triggered by increased canopy mortality (a strong local driver particularly in QR plots) and also points to the signal of global change symptoms (thermophilization, homogenization), which acted rather independently from the observed decline in tree layer cover.