Predicting understorey vegetation cover from overstorey attributes in two temperate mountain forests

摘要

It is important to develop a predictive understanding for the environmental controls on understorey vegetation, which harbor most of the plant biodiversity and are the source of food and cover for wildlife. Forest succession models (i.e. gap models) representing overstorey dynamics are not commonly linked to mathematical models of understorey dynamics. This is surprising, given that understorey vegetation clearly responds to changes in the overstorey that result in changing light availability. One difficulty may he in the coarse representation of fight regime captured by most gap models. Linkage of overstorey-understorey models might be facilitated if the diameter structure of simulated stands could be used to drive understorey change, as a proxy for fight and other influences.