TY  - JOUR
A1  - Heinrichs, Steffi
A1  - Bernhardt-Römermann, Markus
A1  - Schmidt, Wolfgang
T1  - The estimation of aboveground biomass and nutrient pools of understorey plants in closed Norway spruce forests and on clearcuts
T2  - European journal of forest research
N2  - The estimation model PhytoCalc allows a non-destructive quantification of dry weight and nutrient pools of understorey plants in forests by using the relationship between species biomass, cover and mean shoot length. The model has been validated with independent samples in several German forest types and can be a useful tool in forest monitoring. However, in open areas within forests (e.g. clearcuts), the current model version underestimates biomass and produces unreliable nutrient pool estimations. Thus, tissue density, as approximated by leaf dry matter content (LDMC), is systematically higher under high light compared to low light conditions. We demonstrate that the ratio of LDMC under clearcut conditions to LDMC under forest conditions can be used to adjust the PhytoCalc model to clearcut conditions. We investigated the LDMC ratio of five exemplary species commonly occurring on clearcuts. Integrating the square of the ratio as a correction factor improved estimates of biomass to more than 70% fit between observations and predictions. Results also suggest this ratio can be used to correct nutrient concentrations modelled in PhytoCalc, which tend to be overestimated in clearcuts. As morphological groups of plant species exhibit significantly different ratios, we advise using group-specific correction factors for clearcut adjustments in the future.
KW  - Leaf dry matter content (LDMC)
KW  - Nutrient concentration
KW  - Plant morphological groups
Y1  - 2010
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/27376
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-273763
SN  - 1612-4669
SN  - 1612-4758
SN  - 1612-4677
N1  - Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
VL  - 129
IS  - 4
SP  - 613
EP  - 624
PB  - Springer
CY  - Berlin ; Heidelberg
ER  -