Afforestation and Collembola diversity

Informations

Funding country

Hungary

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

2/1/2002

End date

12/31/2005

Budget

13,520 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

Subject / Introduction Soil biodiversity is an intriguing facet of global biodiversity. It is a really possibility that in the nearby future the wood-covered area of Hungary will increase from 19% to 25%. The importance of the afforestation it is that the biodiversity in the forest–soil is always higher than in arable fields. Major functions in the “ecosystem forest” such as productions, nutrient recycling are controlled by the rates at which nutrients are released by decomposition in the soil and litter horizont. The decomposition process drives complex food webs with the soil fauna. Collembola are ubiquitous members of the soil fauna, often reaching abundances on 100.000 or more per square meter. Their major diet is decaying vegetation and associated microbes. Knowledge of long–term trends of forest biodiversity is important to evaluate the impact of here practiced methods of forest management on biodiversity. Site description: The study fields are situated in NW–Hungary and in the Hungarian–Plain. Soil samples will be taken from afforested monotonous and mixed pine cultur-forests, poplar, oak and locust forests as well as from native or native-like deciduous forests, in order to compare their Collembola diversity with the grassland’s and arable fields’ fauna. Sampling methods Soil cores – 100 cm3 – will be removed from randomly selected areas. At each site an 5 cm internal diametered steel corer will be used. The soil cores will be wrapped in plastic film for their safe transportation to the laboratory and they will be subjected to extraction in a modified Tullgren funnel. In order to investigate the epigeic, Collembola Barber traps will be used too.