Lichen Colonization and Gap Structure in Wet-temperate Rainforests of Northern Interior British Columbia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abundant canopy lichen communities characterize wet-temperate rainforests on the windward slopes of interior mountain ranges in north-central British Columbia, Canada. Historically, these forests have regenerated through gap-dynamics; however, our knowledge of lichen colonization within gaps is limited. We have now compared lichen biomass on regenerating trees in naturally occurring 1–3 ha gap-disturbances (these gaps presumed to have originated from insect out-breaks in the late 1800's) with those on regenerating trees of similar age growing in the understory of the surrounding old growth forest. Only small differences were seen in total lichen biomass on regenerating trees between the two settings, however, analysis of the individual lichen groups (Alectoria, Bryoria, Foliose, and Cyanolichen) revealed striking differences. The Bryoria group was 35% more abundant on gap trees (632 g/tree) and was distributed vertically through a larger proportion of the tree crown. The Cyanolichen functional group was largely absent from gap trees, despite high levels of biomass loading (1,332 kg/ha) in the surrounding old-growth stand. Alectoria and Foliose functional groups did not differ significantly in biomass or distribution between regenerating trees of the two types. Tree size positively affected lichen loading. Total lichen biomass was 38% greater on the larger size class (31–44 cm dbh) regenerating trees, with the Alectoria functional group alone having 45% greater biomass on larger trees. Presence or absence of leaves on branch substrate had no effect on lichen loading. Stand-level projections indicate that the old growth forest had 19% more arboreal lichen biomass (2,684 kg/ha) and contained greater lichen species diversity than did the “second-growth” regenerating forest patches. The low cyanolichen biomass in naturally occurring gap openings poses concern for the proposed utility of “new-forestry” type harvesting practices to retain canopy biodiversity using current harvest rotation intervals.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".