Larger fragments have more late‐successional species of woody plants than smaller fragments after 50 years of secondary succession

In 1959, a dam was constructed in Zhejiang, China, creating the Thousand Island Lake with isolated islands of different sizes that were originally hilltops. The vegetation on these isolated patches has been undisturbed since the construction of the dam and gradually gone through succession into secondary forests. In this study, we show that the patch size was an important predictor of forest succession, with larger patches accumulating more late succession species and smaller patches remaining in earlier stages of succession.

Liu, J.; Coomes, D.A.; Hu, G.; Liu, J.; Yu, J.; Luo, Y.; Yu, M.

Journal of Ecology
2018

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