Multiple disturbances, multiple legacies: Fire, canopy gaps and deer jointly change the forest seed bank

Disturbance regimes, like low-intensity fire, canopy gaps, and ungulate browsing, play a critical role in determining ecological composition and structure in temperate forests around the world.
Each disturbance (or lack thereof) can lead to unique plant communities, but we do not understand how combined disturbances change plant diversity and the resulting soil seed bank. Changes in the soil seed bank, which depend on the plants that survive post-disturbance, can then influence future biodiversity and succession.
We used a long-term experiment in West Virginia, U.S.A. that factorially manipulated low-intensity fire, deer exclusion, and canopy gaps. Thirteen years after disturbance initiation, we sampled the seed bank from each disturbance treatment.
We found that low-intensity fire led to increased seed bank density, with additional canopy gaps and deer exclusion each creating unique seed bank communities. Combined fire, canopy gaps, and deer presence led to high seed bank diversity and..., Site: We manipulated prescribed fire, deer presence, and canopy gap creation in four replicate Appalachian hardwood stands in central West Virginia, USA. We established this experiment in 2000 in the Western Allegheny Mountain ecological subsection using two stands in the Monongahela National Forest (39º06’ N, 79º43’ W) and two stands in the Fernow Experimental Forest (39º01’ N, 79º42’ W). Each stand was 60 to 90 years old and between 670 to 800 m in elevation. 
Experimental Design: Our experimental design was a split-plot factorial (Fig. 1), with each stand split in half and randomly assigned a burn treatment (burned or unburned). In each burned and unburned half stand, we established treatment plots (20 x 20 m, 400 m2) representing 8 disturbance treatments: 1) no burn + no deer + no canopy gap, 2) no burn + no deer + canopy gap, 3) no burn + deer + no canopy gap, 4) no burn + deer + canopy gap, 5) burn + no deer + no gap, 6) burn + no deer + canopy gap, 7) burn + deer + no canopy gap,..., , # Multiple disturbances and multiple legacies: Fire, canopy gaps and deer jointly change the forest seed bank

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0gb5mkm8v](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0gb5mkm8v)

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