Vertical pit-mounds distribution of uprooted Norway spruce (Picea abies L.): field evidence in the upper mountain belt

doi:10.3832/ifor1959-010

Vertical pit-mounds distribution of uprooted Norway spruce (Picea abies L.): field evidence in the upper mountain belt

Pawel Zadrozny⁽¹⁾, Wiktor Halecki^(2-3) , Michal Gasiorek⁽¹⁾, Pawel Nicia⁽¹⁾, Tomasz Lamorski⁽⁴⁾

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry, Volume 10, Issue 5, Pages 783-787 (2017)
doi: https://doi.org/10.3832/ifor1959-010
Published: Sep 02, 2017 - Copyright © 2017 SISEF

Short Communications

PDF Version

Full Text

Citation

Geo-mapping

Tree uprooting causes significant changes in forest habitat functioning and soil formation. In this paper soil uplifted by tree throws was compared among 15 study plots from heterogeneous Norway spruce stands of the upper mountain belt in southern Poland. Pit-mound microtopography parameters such as length, width, depth of tree-throw pits, height of the root plate, and height of mineral and organic mounds, were measured at each uprooting site. Sites were grouped in 3 age groups based on the time elapsed since uprooting. Results showed significant differences between the studied parameters among age groups. Differences were most pronounced in mean pit depth (0.52, 0.65 and 0.95 m for 5-year, 3-year, and 1-year-old pits, respectively). No significant interaction between age group and root plate height was detected by ANOVA. Regression analysis showed that pit depth decreases as root plate height increases. Redundancy analysis using pit-mound parameters as dependent variables revealed that root plate height along with slope steepness are good predictors of the volume of dislocated soil at tree-throw sites. Overall, our results suggest that the erosion expected at uprooting sites in mountain Norway spruce stands could be conveniently estimated by measuring their root plates. This may help estimate the impact of windthrow on soil microtopography and quantify its effects on soil disturbance in Norway spruce stands of the upper mountain belt.

Keywords

Bioturbation, Mountain Landscapes, Microtopography, Soil Disturbance, Tree Uprooting

Authors’ address

(1)

Department of Soil Science and Soil Protection, University of Agriculture in Krakow, Al. Mickiewicza 21, 31-120 Kraków (Poland)

(2)

Department of Land Reclamation and Environmental Development, University of Agriculture in Krakow, Al. Mickiewicza 24/28, 30-059, Kraków (Poland)

(3)

Department of Biometry and Forest Productivity, Faculty of Forestry, University of Agriculture in Krakow, Al. 29 Listopada 46, 31-425 Krakow (Poland)

(4)

Babia Góra National Park, 34-223 Zawoja 1403 (Poland)

Corresponding author

Wiktor Halecki
wiktor@mailmix.pl

Citation

Zadrozny P, Halecki W, Gasiorek M, Nicia P, Lamorski T (2017). Vertical pit-mounds distribution of uprooted Norway spruce (Picea abies L.): field evidence in the upper mountain belt. iForest 10: 783-787. - doi: 10.3832/ifor1959-010

Academic Editor

Matteo Garbarino

Paper history

Received: Dec 19, 2015
Accepted: Sep 01, 2017

First online: Sep 02, 2017
Publication Date: Oct 31, 2017
Publication Time: 0.03 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.

Breakdown by View Type

(Waiting for server response...)

Article Usage

Total Article Views: 36830
(from publication date up to now)

Breakdown by View Type
HTML Page Views: 31890
Abstract Page Views: 1930
PDF Downloads: 2325
Citation/Reference Downloads: 16
XML Downloads: 669

Web Metrics
Days since publication: 2421
Overall contacts: 36830
Avg. contacts per week: 106.49

Article Citations

Article citations are based on data periodically collected from the Clarivate Web of Science web site
(last update: Feb 2023)

Total number of cites (since 2017): 1
Average cites per year: 0.14

(no Plumx Metrics available for this paper)

Publication Metrics

by Dimensions ^©

Articles citing this article

List of the papers citing this article based on CrossRef Cited-by.

(1)

Beatty SW, Stone EL (1986)
The variety of soil microsites created by tree falls. Canadian Journal Forest Research 16: 539-548.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(2)

Clarke BA, Burbank DW (2010)
Bedrock fracturing, threshold hillslopes, and limits to the magnitude of bedrock landslides. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 297: 577-586.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(3)

Clinton BD, Baker CR (2000)
Catastrophic windthrow in the southern Appalachians: characteristics of pits and mounds and initial vegetation responses. Forest Ecology and Management 126: 51-60.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(4)

Egli M, Dahms D, Norton K (2013)
Soil formation rates on silicate parent material in alpine environments: different approaches-different results? Geoderma 213: 320-333.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(5)

Emanuel K (2005)
Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years. Nature 436: 686-688.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(6)

Finke PA, Vanwalleghem E, Poesen J, Deckers J (2013)
Estimating the effect of tree uprooting on variation of soil horizon depth by confronting pedogenetic simulations to measurements in a Belgian loess area. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 118: 2124-2139.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(7)

Forest Inventory (2010)
Data base of the Babia Góra National Park. In: “Protection of forest and non-forest ecosystems of the Babia Góra National Park”. Taxus, Warsaw, Poland, pp. 1-360.
Gscholar

(8)

Gabet EJ, Mudd SM (2010)
Bedrock erosion by root fracture and tree throw: a coupled biogeomorphic model to explore the humped soil production function and the persistence of hillslope soils. Journal of Geophysical Research 115 (F4): 35.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(9)

Gabet JE, Reichman JO, Seabloom WE (2003)
The effects of bioturbation on soil processes and sediment transport. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science 31: 249-273.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(10)

Grodzki W, Starzyk JR (2004)
Windthrowns in selected national parks in the Carpathians and related research needs concerning forest protection. Lesne Prace Badawcze 3: 119-124. [in Polish]
Gscholar

(11)

Heimsath AM, Fink D, Hancock GR (2009)
The “humped” soil production function: eroding Arnhem Land, Australia. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 34: 1674-1684.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(12)

Holeksa J (1998)
Breakdown of tree stand and spruce regeneration versus structure and dynamics of a Carpathian subalpine spruce forest. Monographiae Botanicae 82: 1-209. [in Polish]
CrossRef | Gscholar

(13)

IUSS Working Group (2015)
World reference base for soil resources 2014 (update 2015). International soil classification system for naming soils and creating legends for soil maps. World Soil Resources Reports No. 106, FAO, Rome, Italy, pp. 182.
Gscholar

(14)

Lenart MT, Falk DA, Scatena FN, Osterkamp WR (2010)
Estimating soil turnover rate from tree uprooting during hurricanes in Puerto Rico. Forest Ecology and Management 259: 1076-1084.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(15)

Mudd SM, Furbish DJ (2007)
Responses of soil-mantled hillslopes to transient channel incision rates. Journal of Geophysical Research 112 (F3): 29.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(16)

Norman SA, Schaetzl RJ, Small TW (1995)
Effects of slope angle on mass movement by tree uprooting. Geomorphology 14: 19-27.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(17)

Norton PK, Blanckenburg F (2010)
Silicate weathering of soil-mantled slopes in an active Alpine landscape. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 74: 5243-5258.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(18)

Osterkamp WR, Hupp RC, Stofell M (2011)
The interactions between vegetation and erosion: new directions for research at the interface of ecology and geomorphology. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 37: 23-36.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(19)

Parusel J, Kasprowicz M, Holeksa J (2004)
Forests and brushwood communities in the Babiogórski National Park. In: “The nature of the Babiogórski National Park monograph” (Woloszyn BW, Jaworski A, Szwagrzyk J eds). Babiogórski National Park and Nature Conservation Committee, Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakow, Poland, pp. 429-475. [in Polish]
Gscholar

(20)

Pawlik L (2012)
Disturbance of hillslope surfaces due to the tree uprooting process in the Sudetes Mts., SW Poland. Landform Analysis 20: 79-94. [in Polish]
Gscholar

(21)

Phillips JD (2007)
Soil system modeling and generation of field hypotheses. Geoderma 145: 419-425.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(22)

Phillips JD, Marion DA, Turkington AV (2008)
Pedologic and geomorphic impacts of a tornado blowdown event in a mixed pine-hardwood forest. Catena 75: 278-287.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(23)

Putz FE (1983)
Treefall pits and mounds, buried seeds and the importance of soil disturbance to pionier trees on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. Ecology 64: 1069-1074.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(24)

Roering JJ (2008)
How well can hillslope evolution models “explain” topography? Simulating soil production and transport using high-resolution topographic data. Geological Society of America Bulletin 120: 1248-1262.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(25)

Roering JJ, Marshall J, Adam M, Booth MA, Mort M, Jin Q (2010)
Evidence for biotic controls on topography and soil production. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 298: 183-190.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(26)

Schaetzl RJ (1990)
Effects of treethrow microtopography on the characteristics and genesis of Spodosols, Michigan, USA. Catena 17: 111-126.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(27)

Schaetzl RJ, Johnson DL, Burns SF, Small TW (1989)
Tree uprooting: review of terminology, process, and environmental implications. Canadian Journal Forest Resources 19: 1-11.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(28)

Simon A, Gratzer G, Sieghardt M (2011)
The influence of windthrow microsites on tree regeneration and establishment in an old growth mountain forest. Forest Ecology and Management 262: 1289-1297.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(29)

Stephens EP (1956)
The uprooting of trees: a forest process. Soil Science Society of America Journal 20: 113-116.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(30)

Samonil P, Král K, Hort L (2010a)
The role of tree uprooting in soil formation: a critical literature review. Geoderma 157: 65-79.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(31)

Samonil P, Tejnecky V, Borúvka L, Sebková B, Janík D, Sebek O (2010b)
The role of tree uprooting in Cambisol development. Geoderma 159: 83-98.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(32)

Samonil P, Valtera M, Schaetzl RJ, Dušan A, Vašíčková I, Danek P, Janík D, Tejnecky V (2016)
Impas of old, comparatively stable, treethrow microtopography on soils and forest dynamics in the northern hardwoods of Michigan, USA. Catena 140: 55-65.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(33)

Ter Braak CJF, Smilauer P (2002)
CANOCO reference manual and CanoDraw for Windows user’s guide: software for canonical community ordination (version 4.5). Microcomputer Power, Ithaca, NY, USA, pp. 500.
Online | Gscholar

(34)

Ulanova NG (2000)
The effects of windthrow on forests at different spatial scales: a review. Forest Ecology and Management 135: 155-167.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(35)

Zachara T (2006)
Damage to forests caused by snow and wind and the ways of counteracting it. Sylwan 10: 56-64. [in Polish]
Gscholar

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry

Contents

Search

Journal Info

Journal Subjects and Fields

For Authors

For Reviewers

For Readers

SISEF Publishing

Search iForest Contents