Form Submission: Participation Entry

Selective logging is often hailed as the best compromise between full protection and land-use in regions with high forest cover. Little evidence has been found to show that selective logging impacts the species richness of forests. However, seedling communities in logged forests have shown an increased diversity of functional traits, and trait shifts indicative of more plants with fast-growing, acquisitive life-history strategies. These changes are likely due to plants responding to increased heterogeneity of the forests - particularly changes in light caused by logging gaps, skid trails, and roads in logging concessions. Whether these shifts persist years after cutting to impact lasting change remains unclear. I plan to investigate whether shifts in forest regeneration patterns persist for years after logging, or if they represent a short, unique change in community dynamics that only occurs for a period immediately after logging. To do this, I will set up a network of seedling plots across intact forest in a national park and across sites that vary in their time since logging by 1, 3, 6, and 10 years. Canopy recovery can occur 5 years after logging, causing light levels to return to the shady conditions found in intact forests. I predict that older sites will have a seedling community that is less functionally diverse, with more shade-tolerant species; i.e. a community that is more similar to the one found in an intact forest. Additionally, I predict that the seedling community at recently logged sites will be more functionally diverse with more fast-growing, heliophilic species; i.e. a community that is more dissimilar from the intact forest seedling community.