Effects of microsite, water, weeding, and direct seeding on the regeneration of native and alien species within a Hawaiian dry forest preserve
- Author:
-
Cabin, Robert J., Weller, Stephen G., Lorence, David H., Cordell, Susan, Hadway, Lisa J.
- Title:
- Effects of microsite, water, weeding, and direct seeding on the regeneration of native and alien species within a Hawaiian dry forest preserve
- Periodical:
- Biological Conservation
- Year:
- 2002
- Volume:
- 104
- Pages:
- 181-190
- Subject:
-
Tropical dry forests
Rain and rainfall Hawaii Island
Restoration ecology
Endangered species
Alien species
Mamane
Sophora chrysophylla
Kaupulehu
- Summary:
- In general, and particularly in Hawaii, tropical dry forests are among the most endangered and exploited ecosystems in the world. While dry forests were once the most common of all tropical forest types, less than 0.1 percent of the current original Pacific Mesoamerican dry forest ecosystem is protected. In Hawaii, more than 90 percent of the original dry forests have been destroyed and more than 25 percent of the officially listed endangered plant taxa in the Hawaiian flora are from dry-forest or dry-scrub ecosystems. Grazing by non-native ungulates, fire, alien species invasions, and conversion of land to agricultural uses such as ranching have severely fragmented and degraded, by deforestation, Hawaii's once extensive and diverse dry forests. As a result, these direct impacts have been exacerbated by less quantifiable, indirect effects such as the actual or functional loss of species that once pollinated and dispersed seeds and scarification that are critical ecological services. In this study, the regeneration ecology of native and alien dry forest species was investigated in experimental plots that were established within the Kaupulehu preserve. To assess the relative important of three factors -- micro site, water, and presence of alien plants, a factorial design was used as previous studies suggested that these factors most directly affected regeneration in this system. Six native woody species were seeded into each plot at the start of the experiment in an effort to examine the importance of seed availability for the recruitment of native trees and shrubs.
- Label:
- Ecology - Dry Forests
- URL:
- http://cletus.uhh.hawaii.edu:2074/10.1016/S0006-3207(01)00163-X
- Date:
- April 2002
- Collection:
- Periodicals