Factors affecting early red oak (Quercus rubra L.) regeneration near its northern distribution limit in Quebec
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Red oak is an important species within the North American landscape, with climate change projections indicating a potential northward shift in its distribution. However, understanding the factors influencing its regeneration success at the northern limit remains limited. Site conditions and seed provenance adaptability may play critical roles. To bridge this knowledge gap, we conducted a seed transfer study in two northern red oak stands in Quebec. We firstly investigated stand regeneration history through dendrochronological characterization. Then, we monitored the survival and growth of saplings for four red oak provenances across a south-to-north gradient in field and greenhouse settings, with varying soil nutrient levels due to fertilization, and with or without protection from large herbivores. Results indicated that stands have similar age structures with red oak establishment coinciding with the last major fire disturbance in the early 1920s. However, tree species composition and density differed, suggesting differences in fire disturbance regime or ecological succession status prior to fire. Site had the largest influence on red oak regeneration, with the highest tree density and soil water availability site exhibiting a 29% higher survival rate. Protection against large herbivores also significantly impacted red oak seedling performance, leading to a 16% higher survival rate. Germination, survival and growth also significantly differed between provenances. The local (northernmost) provenance exhibited the poorest overall performance with 28 to 42% lower germination, survival and growth rates, while the two southernmost provenances exhibited superior germination and sprout survival. An increase in soil nutrient availability was beneficial to red oak in the greenhouse, but only marginally benefited survival and growth in the field, suggesting that this factor is of less importance than other factors (e.g., water and light availability) for red oak early regeneration. The findings of this study suggest that silvicultural efforts to favor red oak should focus on site and provenance selection, and that water availability is currently limiting red oak regeneration success at acorn and early seedling life stages (i.e., 1 year old seedlings) near its northern distribution limit.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".