A seed rain community in a reforested post-agricultural field and adjacent secondary forest of Mount Papandayan Nature Reserve, West Java, Indonesia

Abstract

Understanding the mechanisms and barriers to the restoration of degraded land, especially post agriculture, will help provide protocols on effective ways of restoration into functional ecosystems. One of the barriers in early stages of forest restoration is the arrival and availability of propagules. Seed rain and factors affecting it (i.e., distance to the forest edge, species diversity and surrounding vegetation) were measured in a reforested post-agricultural field and in an adjacent secondary forest. Multivariate glm analysis was used on the seed rain community data and univariate lm analysis on the most abundant seed captured (i.e., Schima wallichii (DC.) Korth.). After 8 months of seed rain collection, there was a total of 3596 seeds from eight tree species. Seeds were more abundant and more diverse in the secondary forest (74.9%, 8 species) compared to the reforested field (24.1%, 2 species). There was a limitation on seed dispersal in reforested field from the adjacent forest. The abundance of S. wallichii seeds determined by the dominance of adult trees (136 trees/ha in the forest and 115 trees/ha in the reforested field). Our study suggests, that after 7 years of planting, the reforested field has received limited seed rain and has not yet recovered.

Keywords

Seed rain / Montane tropical forest / Post-agriculture succession / Forest edge / Multivariate analysis

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