Long-term impacts of variable retention harvesting on ground-layer plant communities in Pinus resinosa forests

Concerns about loss of biodiversity and structural complexity in managed forests have recently increased and led to the development of new management strategies focused on restoring or maintaining ecosystem functions while also providing wood outputs. Variable Retention Harvest (VRH) systems, in which mature overstorey trees are retained in various spatial arrangements across harvested areas, represent one potential approach to this problem. However, long-term evaluations of the effectiveness of this strategy at sustaining plant community composition are needed as this strategy is increasingly applied in managed forest landscapes throughout the world. The forest ground layer plays a central role in forest ecosystem functioning and we evaluated the long-term (11+ year) dynamics in ground-layer plant communities in response to VRH study in Pinus resinosa Aiton. forests. This large-scale, manipulative study included four overstorey (control, small gap-aggregated, large gap-aggregated and ...