Welcome to Chinese Journal of Ecology! Today is Share:

cje

Previous Articles     Next Articles

Effect of harvesting methods on branch modular population characteristics of the planted pharmaceutical raw material forest of Taxus yunnanensis.

BIAN Fang-yuan1, SU Lei2, SU Jian-rong1**, LIU Wan-de1, LI Shuai-feng1   

  1. (1Research Institute of Resource Insects, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Kunming 650224, China; 2State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China)
  • Online:2015-04-10 Published:2015-04-10

Abstract:

An experiment was carried out to explore the effect of different harvest methods and harvest intensities on the branch modular population characteristics of sixyear old Taxus yunnanensis plantations, in Maguan County in Yunnan Province. There were three treatments (i.e., harvesting  trunks and their top branches, keeping the trunks but harvesting the top branches, and keeping the trunks but harvesting the bottom branches) and three levels (i.e., harvesting the 1/4 of the crown length, harvesting 2/4 of the crown length, and harvesting 3/4 of the crown length). The results showed that the branch growth increased with the increasing harvest intensity. The proportion of sprouting new shoots from old branches, the number of new shoots, shoot length and volume after harvesting 3/4 of crown length were significantly higher than those of the control. In addition, the new branch length and volume after harvesting the top crown branches were higher than those after harvesting the bottom crown branches. More branches, therefore, can grow out after harvesting the top crown branches and trunk because of removing the apical dominance. Our results indicated that harvesting the 3/4 of crown length and trunk was the optimal harvest option, which could make more branches to be harvested and keep the sustainable use of the Taxus yunnanensis forest.
 

Key words: physiological and biochemical cha-racteristics, woody species, herbaceous species, FvCB model, photosynthetic capacity