The impact of forest management on forest floor vegetation evaluated by species traits

This study investigated if ecological traits of forest floor vegetation could be used as indicators of naturalness of beech forest in Hungary, by comparing near-natural unmanaged stands with managed ones. Seventeen patches in the unmanaged Kekes Forest Reserve were compared with 11 subcompartments of different ages in the surrounding managed forest. In each stand, the character state distributions of 9 ecological species traits were calculated based on presence/absence data of plants. Averages for unmanaged versus managed stands were compared. Significant effects of management were shown. The characteristics of herbaceous plants with higher frequency in managed stands include late start and longer duration of flowering, overwintering canopy, and small epizoochorous seeds. Unmanaged stands are richer in plants that bear leaves from spring to autumn, start flowering early or flower very shortly, produce large seeds. Relevance of this method is discussed for Central Europe, where in large areas intensive forest management rather than fragmentation or break in forest continuity is the major human disturbance.