Two centuries of forest succession, and 30 years of vegetation changes in permanent plots in an inland sand dune area, the Netherlands

Abstract

There are not many sites in densely populated temperate Europe where primary forest succession has a chance to run without direct human intervention for a long time and over a relatively large area. The extensive drift sand area of the Veluwe, central Netherlands, provided an opportunity to study succession in a formerly open and dynamic inland sand dune system combining chronosequence and permanent plot approaches. Different successional stages, aged up to 205 years since the first tree individuals established, were identified and vegetation studied using 1200 permanent plots established in 1988 in three adjacent sand dune complexes of different successional age, and resampled during the past three decades. After two centuries, forest succession has proceeded to a pine forest with gradually increasing participation of native deciduous trees. However, their expansion has been arrested by browsing of wild ungulates. Species diversity peaked after about 40 years of forest succession, then declined, and increased again after 100 years. During the past three decades, the herb layer has differentiated in the oldest plots, and the spontaneous forest succession is still in progress. Besides open drift sand with early successional stages, also the spontaneously established late successional forests are valuable from the conservation point of view.