Oak regeneration failure

Oak regeneration failure has been recognised for hundreds of years. Early evidence of challenges to oak regeneration lies in French ordinances from the 13th century which mandated the planting of oak seedlings to ensure that harvesting did not outstrip production, set in place owing to oak's high timber value and versatility.[3] Great Britain imported oak from colonial America to compensate for the scarcity of it in Britain.[3] One of the first government-sponsored pieces of forestry research in America was to promote the growth of live oak (Quercus virginiana), which was used for shipbuilding.[3]

Oak continued to be an important lumber even after wooden ships became obsolete, and concerns about its regeneration continued as forestry developed. Throughout the early 1900s, researchers studied forests throughout the American Midwest and South, finding that, after clearcutting a forest lot, oaks were able to maintain primacy in the next generation if there was significant advance regeneration or disturbance from fire, but declined in many other cases.[3]

Oak appeared to regenerate more freely in the distant past than in modern times, which may in part be attributable to obsolete or declining woodland management practices as well as local site ecology.[4]

Various factors at differential stages in the lifecycle of oak play a potential role in causing oak regeneration failure. However, seedling growth and survival is regarded as a critical stage that determines success or failure of oak regeneration, especially during a seedling’s first summer after germination.[5] Since oak is a light-demanding genus, survivorship of seedlings to be recruited into the canopy is majorly determined by incident light-levels on the woodland floor, which in turn is governed by gaps in the woodland canopy.

As well as limiting the levels of incident light onto the woodland floor, mature oaks can also impede growth of seedlings by dropping on them leaf-eating caterpillars. The caterpillars can proceed to defoliate the seedlings, depriving them of their energy reserves and inhibiting survival.[5]

In unmanaged stands and under historical indigenous management in America, fire was a primary agent of creating sizable canopy gaps, enabling the recruitment of oaks into the mature canopy.[6] However, modern forest management often entails fire exclusion, leading to smaller canopy gaps and less capacity for oaks to access the needed light.[7] The decline of coppicing and other traditional woodland management practices have resulted in a similar situation in Britain and Europe.[4]

Successful regeneration relies on the production and dispersal of sufficient acorns for regeneration.[6] In the wake of extensive logging, many forests in the United States have more simplified and homogeneous stand compositions compared to natural stands. Because acorn production declines with age,[6] this may lead to a decrease in acorn dispersal, endangering the next generation of oaks.

Oaks are also under threat from pests, pathogens, and animal browsing, all of which damage the vulnerable understory trees that replace older oaks. For example, the arrival of a non-native powdery mildew pathogen in European woodlands and forests in the early 1900s gave rise to concerns about the regenerative failure of the widespread native pedunculate oak (Quercus robur).

Powdery mildew is a prominent example of a pathogen hampering oak regeneration. In affected pedunculate oaks, research shows that powdery mildew makes them more light-demanding, reducing their competitiveness with other tree species (known as the pathogen mildew hypothesis),[7] and making them succumb to even a small degree of shade which they may otherwise have survived.[4]

Predation of oaklings by browsing herbivores such as deer can also have a deleterious effect on oak regeneration. Moreover, because fencing and other exclusion methods are cost-prohibitive, deer are also able to browse freely on many managed forests, which reduces oak competitiveness because they are a favored species of the herbivores.[8]

However, oaks are generally tolerant of browsing under sufficient light conditions. Furthermore, oak regeneration in Europe is still successful in transitional habitats such as forest edges, fallows and abandoned grassland,[9] habitats where Eurasian jays, the most important disperser of European oaks, prefer to deposit acorns.[10] Nonetheless, studies on oak regeneration commonly focus on closed-canopy forest. Therefore, it has been suggested that the main reason for oak regeneration failure in Europe may be found in land-use changes since the early modern period, with the abandonment of wood-pastures, pannage and forest grazing and the more homogenous landscapes this brought about. Overall, oaks appear to be specialized colonizers of formerly grazed grassland or areas recently burned, which would render the search for oak regeneration inside forests futile from the outset.[10] In line with the Vera hypothesis it has consequently been suggested that oaks are originally adapted to regenerate in savanna-like habitats shaped by large herbivores. Indeed, extensive grazing followed by temporary abandonment can result in almost closed stands of oak.[11]

The economic impact of oak regeneration failure can be substantial given that oak is a ubiquitous and often critical tree genus in many American and European forests. Moreover, it has been estimated that as few as 4% of oak-dominated forests in the Eastern U.S. have sufficient oaks to replace the current canopy.[12]

Oak forests comprise 51% (78.5 million ha) of U.S. forestland.[13] As such, they have high economic value and ecological importance. Many animal species, especially among insects, prefer the composition and structure of oak forest types over others, and regional-scale declines in oak forest are shown to have deleterious impacts on animal populations.[6]

Modern efforts are focused on sustaining pre-modern conditions through such tactics as reintroducing fire to forests that were previously under natural or indigenous fire regimes and creating deer exclusion zones to reduce the intensity of browsing.[12] Scientists are also studying how climate change will impact the regeneration of oaks. Some models suggest that oaks will rise in prominence as warming temperatures favour their proliferation in certain habitats over other species,[14] but changes in temperature and precipitation patterns are also likely to have adverse effects on oaks, particularly young trees.[6]