Small-scale seed bank patterns in a forest soil
- Plue, Jan
- Goyens, Geertrui
- Van Meirvenne, Marc
- Verheyen, Kris
- Hermy, Martin
DOIAbstract
The forest seed bank has been demonstrated to vary spatially at scales from 2 to 10m. To our knowledge, the fine-scale spatial structure, i.e. <2m, has not been studied before. This study aims to make a thorough investigation of fine-scale spatial structure. Soil samples (128) were collected from each of five 2.1m×2.1m plots, using a combined systematic (64) and random design (64). This allowed investigation of the fine-scale spatial structure of individual species-plot combinations using indicator-variograms. Our results indicated that over half of all species recorded in a particular plot were spatially structured. Remarkably, the presence of spatial structure seemed independent of species frequency. Visualization of the spatial structure...
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