NATURAL REGENERATION OF FOREST RELATED TO THE SPATIAL STRUCTURE OF TREES - A STUDY OF 2 FOREST COMMUNITIES IN WESTERN CARPATHIANS, SOUTHERN POLAND

The existence of a relationship between the spatial pattern of trees and the distribution of young individuals beneath the canopy has been tested in the beech (Fagus sylvatica) and spruce (Picea abies) - fir (Abies alba) forests in the mountainous region, using two different methods. The first method was the analysis of spatial pattern of individuals, the second one was based on calculating sums of influences of all trees occurring within analysed plot on a given point on the forest floor. Results of spatial pattern analyses were surprisingly consistent: almost all mature trees and seedlings didplayed a random pattern of spatial arrangement. However, there is a clear, although statistically insignificant tendency towards uniformity of spatial pattern with increasing sizes of analysed trees. Results of comparing sums of influences on regularly distributed points with sums of influences on seedlings or saplings revealed no tendency in forest regeneration to concentrate in places, where the sums were smaller than the average for a plot. This, coupled with the dominance of random spatial pattern of trees, suggests, that viewed on a small spatial scale, influence of competition among forest trees on their spatial arrangement is obscured by other factors, which are not closely related to the distribution of individuals. © 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.