The connection between the available soil water regime and basal area increment in a sessile oak ecosystem
2005
Brezina, L. | Tuzinsky, L.
The work focused on the basal area increment in a sessile oak forest in the Kozmalovske Hills, Slovakia. The study was based on the yearly increment indexes as a function of water amount stored in soils, at the depth of 20 cm and 100 cm, measured on a monthly basis over the period of 10 years. To analyze the the effect of soil water at the depth of 20 cm and 100 cm on the increment indexes and the overall production capacity of oak on a given site, multiple linear regression analysis was employed. Neither its results nor the statistical significance test of the regression coefficients proved the effect of the analyzed factor on the amount of increment indexes for the basal area of individual trees. This fact may imply that the production capacity of oak on a given site would only have been limited by the absence of available soil water, a case that never occurred for a sufficiently long period of time. In other word, soil water content during the vegetation periods was not high enough to intensively stimulate the growth, but not low enough either, to limit it. On the other hand, the very fact that there was a yearly increment of the basal area, means that that there is a causal connection between the ecological factors and the growth. However, due to ecological amplitude, various synergies and the interplay between pertinent ecological factors such as soil moisture, temperature and climate, correlations could not be identified.
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