Abstract
Mixed-species plantation forests are of high interest both because of their potentially superior productivity and multi-functionality benefits over monocultures. However, how trees of different species interact at the canopy level in mixed forests remains unclear, even at young growth stages. We tested whether crown shape and size and stand-level canopy packing were affected by stand composition and how mixture effects varied with stand density and irrigation. We measured crown attributes in pure and mixed plots of two light-demanding species, silver birch (Betula pendula Roth) and maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Ait.), in a 10-year-old tree diversity experiment (ORPHEE). This allowed us to estimate tree-level crown volumes and stand-level canopy packing. We found that (i) at the tree level, stand composition influenced crown-stem allometric relationships in pine but not in birch, (ii) mixture led to greater crown and tree dimensions in pine, but to the opposite for birch, (iii) the changes in crown volume resulted in a higher canopy packing in mixed stands, only at high density and with no irrigation, i.e., under highest constraints for light availability but also soil water availability, contrary to initial expectations. This study sheds light on the effects of water constraints on the aboveground mechanistic processes that explain greater productivity in young mixed plantations, and improves our understanding of canopy packing in mixed stands.
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The dataset analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank INRAE–UEFP (Forest Experimental Facility UEFP (https://doi.org/10.15454/1.5483264699193726E12) for the year-to-year management of the experimental site, and more specifically Bernard Issenhuth and his colleagues who helped measure all the tree crowns in 2017. We are grateful to Alain Kruszewski for taking the digital hemispherical photographs and processing them using the CAN-EYE software and to Dominique Guyon and Sylvia Dayau for elaborating the corresponding protocol. This work was conducted in the framework of the “Investissements d’Avenir” program Lab of Excellence ARBRE (ANR-11-LABX-0002-01) overseen by the French National Research Agency (ANR). We also thank Xavier Morin for his constructive feedback on the manuscript and Vicki Moore for English language editing. Finally, we thank the two anonymous reviewers who greatly contributed to the improvement of a previous version of our manuscript.
Funding
This study was funded by the French National Research Agency (Project DiPTiCC, ANR-16-CE32-0003-01). SMB received a PhD grant from the French National Research Agency (Project DiPTiCC, ANR-16-CE32-0003-01). The ORPHEE experiment was funded through the GIP-ECOFOR program by the French Ministry of Ecology and the Environment within the framework of the BIOPICC ECOFOR-2014–15 project. Irrigation for the ORPHEE experiment was supported by Grants from 'Investissements d'avenir' under the EquipEx Xyloforest program (ANR-10-EQPX-16-01).
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SMB: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing—original draft. CM: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing—review & editing. HJ: Conceptualization, Resources, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Writing—review & editing. DB: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing—original draft, Supervision. MC: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing—original draft, Supervision.
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Martin-Blangy, S., Meredieu, C., Jactel, H. et al. Species-mixing effects on crown dimensions and canopy packing in a young pine–birch plantation are modulated by stand density and irrigation. Eur J Forest Res 142, 197–216 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-022-01511-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-022-01511-2