Wind storms are a major disturbance type that shapes forest stand dynamics in North America. Post-windthrow salvage logging reduces economic loss of wood, and even though the impacts of machine traffic on soil properties is apparent, very few studies examine the early mechanisms of vegetation recovery. This study asked, a) if salvaging following a blowdown changes the patterns of forest regeneration relative to a blowdown site that remained unsalvaged and, b) if salvage logging would drive biotic homogenization of the plant community. In 2012, a tornado struck Powdermill Nature Reserve creating four blowdowns ranging in size from two to four ha. Each of the blowdown was split in half along its longest axis, with a randomly assigned half logged while the other half was unsalvaged. Eight 36 m2 plots were placed in each half of each blowdown. Vegetation surveys were conducted within a year of salvaging on all woody and non-tree plants within plots. Generalized linear mixed effect models were used to compare vegetation attributes on salavage logged and unlogged sites. Homogenization of vegetation attributes was tested by comparing variances in vegetation attributes between salvaged and unsalvaged sites using F-Test and Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling approaches.
Results/Conclusions
Results one year after salvage logging shows that richness and diversity of woody plants was not significantly impacted. Salvaging had detrimental effects on sapling density but not seedling densities. The total cover of the non-tree plant species was not significantly impacted by salvage logging, however, salvage logging led to increases in the non-tree species richness (+33%) and diversity (+22%). There was no evidence of biotic homogenization as variance in vegetation attributes within the salvage logged and unlogged sites were comparable. It is concluded that, salvage logging an old-growth mixed species hardwood forest is not detrimental.