Understory vegetation as a useful predictor of natural regeneration and canopy dynamics in Pinus sylvestris forest in Italy.

The relations between understory vegetation, canopy characteristics and natural regeneration have been studied in natural Scots pine forests growing in sub-Mediterranean conditions in Italy. Multivariate ordination techniques (detrended correspondence analysis, DCA, and detrended canonical correspondence analysis, DCCA) have been applied to extract vegetation gradients. The first four DCA axes accounted for 41% of the total variation in vegetation data and DCA ordination patterns have been interpreted by the variability of forest stands, ranging from pioneer pine communities to closed pine stands mixed with hardwood species. Characteristic indicator values (CIVs), computed by understory species abundance using the Ellenberg's species scores, have been tentatively used as estimators of environmental variability. Relating vegetation gradients extracted by DCA to CIVs allowed further interpretation of the multivariate ordination patterns. Geographic and edaphic factors had only a minor effect on plant communities in the present study. The competition exerted in mixed stands by hardwood species seems to be the main limiting factor for Scots pine recruitment in the study area. Multivariate synthetic variable and CIVs were found to predict a large proportion of variation in Scots pine recruitment. The application of CIVs for predicting ecological meaningful conditions and their use as a tool for management decisions is discussed.