Long term monitoring of natural regeneration in natural forest reserves in Austria - results from the ELENA project - : Poster presented at the 5th Symposium for Research in Protected Areas. 10 - 12 June 2013, Nationalpark Hohe Tauern Zentrum, Mittersill
One of the main objectives of establishing natural forest reserves is to observe natural dynamics, which can serve as a reference for near-to-nature management. The role of deadwood for a successful natural regeneration has been described by several authors (e.g. Hunziker & Brang 2005; Zielonka 2006; Lonsdale et al. 2008; Baèe et al. 2012). Baèe et al. (2012) have shown, that similar to this study the diameter has a significant effect on a successful regeneration. The decay process seems to have a variable effect in many studies (Baèe et al. 2012; Zielonka 2006), similar to this study. Surrounding vegetation was found by Baèe et al. (2012) has a positive effect on recruitment, but decreases with a high percentage again. This finding is in line with our results, as the moss coverage shows a similar trend. Also Iijima et al. (2007) shows that moss have a positive effect for regeneration. Other authors have demonstrated the positive effect of special fungi species, this finding could not be confirmed with this study in each respect, as the availability of a fruiting body was found to have a negative effect. Most of the studies have used different size classes for studying natural regeneration. In this study the whole population ranging from seedlings to individuals with a height less than 130cm have been used to model the effect of deadwood on regeneration success. Further analysis for different size classes of the natural regeneration could help to differentiate between the different parameters. The long term monitoring network established in the context of this study has shown already some interesting insights in natural regeneration dynamics. Further investigations in the future will increase the relevance of the sample plots (c.f. Bugmann & Brang 2009; Brang et al. 2011) although some influence by man can be observed. The set of parameters chosen for data investigation allows comparison with other national and international studies in protected natural reserves.
