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Within-crown structural variability of dwarfed mature Abies mariesii in snowy subalpine parkland in central Japan

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Journal of Forest Research

Abstract

We investigated mature dwarf Abies mariesii trees growing in conifer thicket–meadow parklands on a snowy subalpine plateau, where these dwarf trees are buried in the accumulated snow in winter. We focused on structural variation in the needles, shoots, and branchlets within different crown positions (leader crown vs lower crown) of the dwarf trees. In the leader crown, which appears above the snow surface earlier than the lower crown, current-year shoots and branchlets had greater total biomass, and foliage was more closely packed along the stem axis than in the lower crown, whereas current-year shoots in the leader crown had a lower needle mass ratio than in the lower crown. These results suggest that current-year shoots and branchlets in the leader crown have a specific structure that allows them to harvest more light, although construction and maintenance costs would be higher. In contrast, the structural characteristics of current-year shoots and branchlets in the lower crown efficiently concentrate incoming light by avoiding mutual shading within foliage, thus leading to increased biomass of photosynthetic needles within shoot and branchlet biomass. Such within-crown variability at various hierarchical levels from needles to branches in mature, but very dwarf, A. mariesii trees maintains the crown and allows survival within conifer clumps in areas of subalpine parklands that receive heavy snowfall.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Hiroshi Takeda, Naoya Osawa, Yusuke Doi, and Takuo Hishi of Kyoto University, for their support with the research and for valuable comments. We are also grateful to D.G. Sprugel and Hugh Barclay for their useful comments on the manuscript. This study was funded by a JSPS Research Fellowship for Young Scientists to A.M., and was also partly supported by the JSPS Research Fellowship for Young Scientist to E.M. Fujiwara Natural History Foundation also provided a fund for this research.

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  1. School of Resource and Environmental Management, Faculty of Applied Science, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

    Akira S. Mori

  2. Division of Environmental Science and Technology, Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Eri Mizumachi

  3. Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University, 79-7 Tokiwadai, Hodogaya, Yokohama, 240-8501, Japan

    Akira S. Mori

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  1. Akira S. Mori
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Correspondence to Akira S. Mori.

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Mori, A.S., Mizumachi, E. Within-crown structural variability of dwarfed mature Abies mariesii in snowy subalpine parkland in central Japan. J For Res 14, 155–166 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10310-009-0115-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10310-009-0115-y

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