New Zealand Journal of Botany abstracts
New Zealand's potential forest pattern as predicted from current
species-environment relationships
J. R. LEATHWICK
Landcare Research
Private Bag 3127
Hamilton, New Zealand
Abstract New Zealand's potential forest composition was
predicted from regressions relating the distributions of major canopy tree
species to environment. Environmental variables, chosen for their
correspondence to major tree physiological processes, included annual and
seasonal temperature and solar radiation, soil and atmospheric water deficit,
soil leaching, slope, and soil parent material and drainage. Environmental
values were estimated both for a large set of irregularly distributed plots
describing forest composition, and points on a 1-km grid across New Zealand.
Regressions were fitted to the plot data species by species, with those for the
four
Nothofagus species also including terms to correct for the effects
of their geographic disjunctions. Regressions for other species contained both
environmental variables and terms to account for their competitive interactions
with the patchily distributed but strongly competitive
Nothofagus
species. Predictions of species abundance were then made for the grid data
set, and the resulting matrix was classified to derive groups of similar
composition. Results agree closely with published descriptions of New Zealand's
forests, including for sites long deforested. They are expected to provide a
context for both the assessment of the biodiversity value of surviving forest
remnants and for the subsequent management and/or restoration of these sites.
Keywords broadleaved; climate; competition; conifer;
conservation; forest; landform; Nothofagus; prediction; regression
B00046
Received 24 October 2000; accepted 8 February 2001
New Zealand Journal of Botany, 2001, Vol. 39: 447-464
0028-825X/01/3903-0447 $7.00 (c) The Royal Society of New Zealand 2001
PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (8293K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)
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