Twenty years of temperate montane forest progression in the oldest Polish national park
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15287/afr.2025.4070Keywords:
Abies alba, aboveground biomass, Fagus sylvatica, increment, monitoring, mortality, recruitmentAbstract
The historical fragmentation of forest ecosystems led to a significant spatial reduction in natural forest biomes. After centuries of exploitation for various purposes, the fragments remaining as national parks have been systematically monitored. This provides a wide range of field data and allows an in-depth understanding of processes responsible for short- and long-term forest dynamics. The existing monitoring systems should be considered unique and worth maintaining because they spanned before the era of remote sensing data acquisition in sufficient spatial and temporal resolution. We explored tree monitoring data from the oldest national park in Poland – Pieniny National Park (PNP) in the Western Carpathians, established in 1932. We assessed stand aboveground increment, recruitment, and mortality for 44 monitoring plots with field observations obtained in 1987, 1998, and 2009. Using a linear mixed-effects model, we assessed differences in stand biomass among sampling years and determined the drivers of biomass dynamics. For relative values of increment, recruitment, and mortality, we developed generalized linear mixed-effects models with a Beta distribution of the dependent variable. We found that stand composition was only slightly affected across 22 years. The mean aboveground biomass increased evenly and significantly (from 168 to 237 Mg/ha). Stand dynamics were mostly affected by stand structure characteristics, especially basal area (BA) and density, while other factors (geomorphometric and climatic characteristics) modified these relationships. The importance of climatic and geomorphometric factors shows local responses of stand dynamics, which can be utilized for fine-scale sites. We found twice higher relative increments in SW than in NE exposition, which can be related to higher insolation (sunlight and temperature) on SW-exposed hillslopes. The aboveground tree biomass change caused by mortality was partly controlled by several variables, among which the most important was BA. With increasing BA, mortality increased and was also slightly related to steeper slopes. Species-specific trends were dominated by species proportion. Fagus sylvatica had higher relative increment and mortality in plots with its dominance, while Abies alba absolute increment decreased. Studying the mountain forest dynamics is crucial for biodiversity, soil and groundwater protection, and tourism. Ground measurements are an accurate way to estimate biomass.
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