Detecting Coppice Legacies from Tree Growth

In coppice-with-standards, once a common type of management in Central European lowland forests, selected trees (standards) were left to grow mature among the regularly harvested coppice stools to obtain construction wood. After the underwood was harvested, the forest canopy opened rapidly, giving standard trees an opportunity to benefit from reduced competition. Although this silvicultural system virtually disappeared after WWII, historical management cycles can still be traced in the tree-rings of remaining standards. Our research aims at answering the question whether tree-ring series of standard trees can be used to reconstruct past management practices. The study was carried out on 117 oak standard trees from five sites situated in formerly coppiced calcareous oak-hornbeam and acidophilous oak forests in the Bohemian Karst Protected Landscape Area, Czech Republic. The evaluation was based on the analysis of growth releases representing the response of the standards to coppicing events, and comparison to the archival records of coppice events. Our results showed that coppicing events can be successfully detected by tree-ring analysis, although there are some limitations. Altogether 241 releases were identified (49% of major releases). Large number of releases could be related to historical records, with the major ones giving better results. The overall probability of correct detection (positive predictive power) was 58%, ranging from 50 to 67%, probability for major releases was 78%, ranging from 63 to 100% for different sites. The ability of individual trees to mirror past coppice events was significantly affected by competition from neighboring trees (their number and the sum of distance-weighted basal areas). A dendro-ecological approach to the study of forest management history can serve as an input for current attempts of coppice reintroduction and for conservation purposes.