Managing forests for multiple ecosystem services such as timber, carbon, and biodiversity requires information on ecosystem structure and management characteristics. National forest inventory data are increasingly being used to quantify ecosystem ser...
Different silvicultural treatments that are applied at plantation establishment may drive different vegetation succession pathways. These divergent vegetation types subsequently feed back to influence soil carbon and nitrogen cycles. One potential me...
The understory vegetation forms an important ecosystem by providing habitat, cycling nutrients, and contributing to community diversity. However, previous studies have focused on identifying mechanisms between understory herbaceous diversity and abio...
In the pine forests of Mexico, disturbances are primarily due to cattle, horses, goat, and sheep grazing, particularly in communal grazing lands. The most evident disturbances are low tree recruitment, invasive shrubs establishment, species compositi...
Continuous monoculture in poplar plantations often leads to declining soil nutrient availability and productivity. Phosphorus (P), in particular, frequently becomes a key limiting factor due to its high fixability and low chemical availability in the...
Forest management strongly influences understory plant communities, yet their responses to management remain context-dependent and scale-sensitive. This review synthesizes current knowledge on understory vegetation in managed forests by combining a b...
During a 33-year sampling period, we observed species richness and calculated species evenness and Shannon Diversity for understory woody seedlings and herbaceous species on three small islands in Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, and noted consiste...
The prolonged retention of senescent branches and needles (canopy litter) in Cunninghamia lanceolata canopies is an evolutionary adaptation, yet its impacts on stand microenvironment and understory succession remain poorly quantified. To address this...
Afforestation plays an important role in controlling soil erosion and nutrient loss on the Loess Plateau in China. However, previous studies on soil nutrient changes have mainly focused on the effects of tree species, whereas little is known about ho...
Eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) is a foundation species in eastern North American forests. Because eastern hemlock is a foundation species, it often is assumed that the diversity of associated species is high. However, the herbaceous layer of east...
Medicinal plants grown outside their native forest habitat may produce phytochemical profiles that differ from wild-harvested material, yet the ecological mechanisms underlying these differences remain poorly synthesized across disciplines. This revi...
Illegal logging is a major driver of tropical deforestation, accounting for the majority of timber harvested in many tropical countries and degrading many protected areas, due to both weak law enforcement capacity and corruption. Commercial logging i...
Research Highlights: Herb-layer community composition, abundance, species richness, and Shannon–Wiener diversity index are shaped by nitrogen fertilization, disturbance history, and the overstory tree species in its immediate vicinity. Background and...
Understory vegetation plays a crucial role in nutrient turnover and cycling in plantations, but it also competes for nutrients with crop trees when only a single species is present due to its specific nutrient requirements. However, it remains unclea...
Understory vegetation affects the richness and stability of urban forest ecosystems. To investigate the influence of soil physicochemical properties on the diversity of understory plants in urban forests, this study used 30 urban forest communities i...
Lowland tropical rainforests harbor the most diverse plant communities in the world, but the herbaceous plants of the understory are often overlooked. To address this knowledge gap, we asked to what extent the understory herbaceous community contribu...
Long-term monoculture of poplar plantations for industrial material production has been widely reported to cause severe soil degradation, while the presence of understory vegetation might enhance soil nitrogen (N) transformation and supply. This stud...
Understory community diversity in urban forests is crucial for maintaining urban ecosystem functions and enhancing urban resilience, but it is threatened by rapid urbanization. Currently, there remains a knowledge gap regarding the multi-scale respon...
Oak forests are important components of temperate forest ecosystems, yet the factors shaping understory plant diversity in Southeast European thermophilous oak forests remain insufficiently understood. This study investigates understory plant diversi...
Vertical stratification is a recognized pattern in tropical forests; however, biotic and abiotic factors driving this pattern are little explored. We investigated the influence of daily climatic variation in the vertical stratification of fruit-feedi...
The understory of temperate forests harbour most of the plant species diversity present in these ecosystems. The maintenance of this diversity is strongly dependent on canopy gap formation, a disturbance naturally happening in non-managed forests, wh...
Forest understory vegetation is largely influenced by disturbances and given local abiotic conditions. Our research focuses on the early response of understory vegetation to various forest management intensities in Dinaric fir-beech forests in Sloven...
Although it has its advantages for the development of urban areas, road construction is among the greatest threats to biodiversity, due to fragmentation, habitat loss, and changes in landscape structure. This study investigated the effects of differe...
Pine-forest bird communities are affected by the forest structure and the density and composition of its understory vegetation. In this study, we focused on the combined effects of vegetation structure and caller identity on the mobbing behavior of b...
Ecological restoration and biodiversity are currently hot issues of global environmental concern. However, knowledge about the specific impacts of restoration duration on understory vegetation diversity remains limited. Therefore, this study comprehe...
At the end of the 19th century and along the first half of the 20th century, public policies in Mediterranean countries and elsewhere in Europe strongly promoted pine afforestation for land reclamation and wood production. In many cases, the transiti...
Planting native groundcover is often recommended to restore the understory of longleaf pine stands in the southeastern United States, but the effectiveness of such restoration activities remains poorly evaluated. We conducted a study in 25-year-old l...
Fire is a disturbance factor in forest ecosystems which has an important influence on vegetation succession. In order to reveal the natural recovery characteristics of the understory vegetation and its response to topographic factors (elevation, slop...
Overstory and understory vegetation play a vital role in forest ecosystem functionality. However, it is necessary to enhance the knowledge of their diversity and compositional dynamics following cessation of disturbance, which is required to inform r...
Masson pine (Pinus massoniana Lamb.) is a tree species that is widely distributed throughout southern China and holds significant economic and ecological value. The main objective of our study was to assess the effects of thinning on aboveground biom...
The herbaceous understory represents a key component of forest biodiversity across temperate forests of Europe. Here, we quantified changes in the diversity and composition of the forest understory layer in representative Slovenian forest ecosystems...
Exotic pine plantations, installed mainly for timber production and carbon sequestration purposes, cover an ever-expanding area of equatorial and tropical regions; however, their economic and environmental benefits are under debate due to their poten...
Fire is the predominant natural disturbance that influences the community structure as well as ecosystem function in forests. This study was conducted to examine the soil properties, loss of aboveground biomass, and understory plant community in resp...
Understanding the influence of invasive species on community composition and ecosystem properties is necessary to maintain ecosystem functions. However, little is known about how understory plant communities and soil nutrients respond to invasion und...
In northern Alberta, Canada, much of treed boreal peatlands are fragmented by seismic lines—linear disturbances where trees and shrubs are cleared for the exploration of fossil fuel reserves. Seismic lines have been shown to have slow tree rege...
To elucidate the effects of different plantation types on understory vegetation and soil properties in the Mu Us Sandy Land, this study investigated five plantation types: Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica Litv. pure forest, P. sylvestris var. mongolic...
Soil respiration (SR) is an important process in the carbon cycle. However, the means by which changes in understory plant community traits affect this ecosystem process is still poorly understood. In this study, plant species surveys were conducted...
Global trends predict a continuous increase in the proportion of forest occupied by plantations up to the end of the 21st century, while a dramatic loss of biodiversity is foreseen as a result of anthropogenic exploitation and climate change. This st...
The mechanisms of the maintenance of plant diversity in forests have been extensively studied because of their ecological importance. The study of the regeneration and growth dynamics of herbaceous understory communities in forests is relatively more...
Studying the relationships between understory plant diversity and soil physicochemical properties aids in understanding the sustainable development of plantation forests. Vegetation restoration in latosol gully erosion areas plays a key role in preve...
The forest ecosystem has understory vegetation that plays a vital role in sustaining diversity, providing nutrients, and forming a useful association for developing a balanced ecosystem. The current study provides detailed insights into the plant bio...
Understory vegetation diversity is the key indicator of ecological outcomes in the close-to-nature transformation of plantations, with its composition revealing successional dynamics and ecosystem functionality. In response to China’s “Gr...
Finding ecosystem or community level indicators for habitat invasibility may provide natural resource managers with environmentally friendly measures to control alien plant invasion; yet, ecosystem invasibility remains understudied. Here, we investig...
Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis (Carrière) J. Houz.) forests are a vital forest type in subtropical China. This study investigates the diversity, floristic composition, and phylogenetic structure of understory vegetation in these bamboo fore...
This study examines the impact of ungulate browsing on the understory dynamics of the Cansiglio Forest, the only European beech high forest in the Southern Limestone Alps. Utilizing seven pairs of fenced versus unfenced forest stands established over...
Semiochemical-baited intercept traps are important tools used to collect information about the presence/absence and population dynamics of forest insects. The performance of these tools is influenced by trap location along both horizontal edge–interi...
Vertical stratification and host tree species are factors with a high influence on the structure of communities of xylobiont beetles. However, little is known about how this influence varies between common and rare species. Based on estimated species...
The present study introduces a method to identify tree stems from terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) data. We focused on forest environments of diverse and layered structure, which were technically characterized by strong occlusion effects with regards...
Mangrove habitats are under severe land use pressure throughout the world and Australia is no exception. Here we describe the heterogeneity of mangrove habitat and its relationship with mangrove bird diversity. We examined the role of mangrove habita...
Garlic mustard, an invasive exotic biennial herb, has been identified in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but is not yet widely distributed. We tested the effectiveness and impact of management tools for garlic mustard in northern hardwood forests. S...
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