In the northeastern United States, whole-tree harvesting is widely used to supply fuel to biomass energy facilities, but questions remain regarding its long-term sustainability. We have previously reported findings in...In the northeastern United States, whole-tree harvesting is widely used to supply fuel to biomass energy facilities, but questions remain regarding its long-term sustainability. We have previously reported findings indicating no short-term decrease in forest productivity in whole-tree harvested sites when compared with similar conventionally (stem-only) harvested sites. Here we present additional results of the same study, but focus on the effect harvest treatment has on the species composition of the regenerating forest. Within northern hardwood forests in central New Hampshire and western Maine, regeneration surveys were conducted on four (4) small clearcuts in 2010 and twenty-nine (29) small clearcuts in 2011. The species and diameter of trees > 2 m in height were recorded within 1 m or 2 m-radius plots and used to calculate the biomass fraction of each species. The 2010 study additionally measured the density of trees 2 m in height and the diversity of understory non-tree species. Non-metric multidimensional scaling and multi-response permutation procedures were used to determine the effect of harvest treatment had on community-wide tree species composition. Potential differences were also examined on a species-by-species basis. Both analytic methods indicated no significant differences in species composition of tree species or understory communities. Within the limits of our data, we conclude that no significant effects of residue removal on species composition are observed within our sample of northern hardwood sites at this early stage of stand development.展开更多
Exclusion has been applied as a main measure for re-vegetation all over the world.This paper,by comparing the results of year-round exclusion,seasonal exclusion,and non-exclusion,quantified the vegetation variations u...Exclusion has been applied as a main measure for re-vegetation all over the world.This paper,by comparing the results of year-round exclusion,seasonal exclusion,and non-exclusion,quantified the vegetation variations under three different exclusion measures and their correlation to soil factors.The analysis results for community species component and plant diversity using multi-response permutation procedures(MRPPs)showed that exclusion did change the species com ponent and increase plant diversity remarkably,while the period of exclusion had no significant influence on these two community features.The indicator species analysis and calculation of similarity indices indicated that community for year-round exclusion were becoming xerophytization and unpalatability,and showed highly spatial heterogeneity of plant species distribution,whereas community for seasonal exclusion was under stable non-equilibrium condition.Detrended correspondence analysis(DCA)and detrend canonical correspondence analysis(DCCA)results of relationship between plant species and soil variables demonstrated that soil moisture was a controlling factor for plant species component,microbiotic soil crust cover,soil organic matter,and soil bulk density had significant effects on soil moisture,among which microbiotic soil crust was a leading factor owing to its limitation to rainfall infiltration on the one hand,and its constraints to entrance of herbaceous seeds into soil or to germination of soil seeds on the other hand.As a result of long-term removal of animal grazing,crust kept intact in year-round exclusion community,which was a main reason of community xerophytization.It was also obvious from ordination results that some important environmental factors,such as tempo-spatial change of rainfall and corresponding tempo-spatial change of soil moisture,were neglected during direct gradient analysis.In addition,biodiversity was close related to soil nutrients as well as to soil moisture condition(soil water content and crust cover),and it had positive relation to available N,and negative relation to available P.Higher soil N had advantage to non-leguminous plants growth on nutrition-poor sand land definitely.The impact of P to community component was unclear and should be studied from plant physiology.Further researches on nonequilibrium theory in semi-arid rangeland will provide a sci-entific and flexible animal development paradigm for being implementing livestock fen-raising and grazing-forbidden policies in China.展开更多
Simultaneously investigating multiple treatments in a single study achieves considerable efficiency in contrast to the traditional two-arm trials.Balancing treatment allocation for influential covariates has become in...Simultaneously investigating multiple treatments in a single study achieves considerable efficiency in contrast to the traditional two-arm trials.Balancing treatment allocation for influential covariates has become increasingly important in today’s clinical trials.The multi-arm covariate-adaptive randomized clinical trial is one of the most powerful tools to incorporate covariate information and multiple treatments in a single study.Pocock and Simon’s procedure has been extended to the multi-arm case.However,the theoretical properties of multi-arm covariate-adaptive randomization have remained largely elusive for decades.In this paper,we propose a general framework for multi-arm covariate-adaptive designs which also includes the two-arm case,and establish the corresponding theory under widely satisfied conditions.The theoretical results provide new insights into the balance properties of covariate-adaptive randomization procedures and make foundations for most existing statistical inferences under two-arm covariate-adaptive randomization.Furthermore,these open a door to study the theoretical properties of statistical inferences for clinical trials based on multi-arm covariateadaptive randomization procedures.展开更多
文摘In the northeastern United States, whole-tree harvesting is widely used to supply fuel to biomass energy facilities, but questions remain regarding its long-term sustainability. We have previously reported findings indicating no short-term decrease in forest productivity in whole-tree harvested sites when compared with similar conventionally (stem-only) harvested sites. Here we present additional results of the same study, but focus on the effect harvest treatment has on the species composition of the regenerating forest. Within northern hardwood forests in central New Hampshire and western Maine, regeneration surveys were conducted on four (4) small clearcuts in 2010 and twenty-nine (29) small clearcuts in 2011. The species and diameter of trees > 2 m in height were recorded within 1 m or 2 m-radius plots and used to calculate the biomass fraction of each species. The 2010 study additionally measured the density of trees 2 m in height and the diversity of understory non-tree species. Non-metric multidimensional scaling and multi-response permutation procedures were used to determine the effect of harvest treatment had on community-wide tree species composition. Potential differences were also examined on a species-by-species basis. Both analytic methods indicated no significant differences in species composition of tree species or understory communities. Within the limits of our data, we conclude that no significant effects of residue removal on species composition are observed within our sample of northern hardwood sites at this early stage of stand development.
基金This research was funded in part by the National Tenth-five-year-plan Science&Technology Project(No.2005BA517A04)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.30571529,30671722).
文摘Exclusion has been applied as a main measure for re-vegetation all over the world.This paper,by comparing the results of year-round exclusion,seasonal exclusion,and non-exclusion,quantified the vegetation variations under three different exclusion measures and their correlation to soil factors.The analysis results for community species component and plant diversity using multi-response permutation procedures(MRPPs)showed that exclusion did change the species com ponent and increase plant diversity remarkably,while the period of exclusion had no significant influence on these two community features.The indicator species analysis and calculation of similarity indices indicated that community for year-round exclusion were becoming xerophytization and unpalatability,and showed highly spatial heterogeneity of plant species distribution,whereas community for seasonal exclusion was under stable non-equilibrium condition.Detrended correspondence analysis(DCA)and detrend canonical correspondence analysis(DCCA)results of relationship between plant species and soil variables demonstrated that soil moisture was a controlling factor for plant species component,microbiotic soil crust cover,soil organic matter,and soil bulk density had significant effects on soil moisture,among which microbiotic soil crust was a leading factor owing to its limitation to rainfall infiltration on the one hand,and its constraints to entrance of herbaceous seeds into soil or to germination of soil seeds on the other hand.As a result of long-term removal of animal grazing,crust kept intact in year-round exclusion community,which was a main reason of community xerophytization.It was also obvious from ordination results that some important environmental factors,such as tempo-spatial change of rainfall and corresponding tempo-spatial change of soil moisture,were neglected during direct gradient analysis.In addition,biodiversity was close related to soil nutrients as well as to soil moisture condition(soil water content and crust cover),and it had positive relation to available N,and negative relation to available P.Higher soil N had advantage to non-leguminous plants growth on nutrition-poor sand land definitely.The impact of P to community component was unclear and should be studied from plant physiology.Further researches on nonequilibrium theory in semi-arid rangeland will provide a sci-entific and flexible animal development paradigm for being implementing livestock fen-raising and grazing-forbidden policies in China.
基金supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No.2018YFC2000302)National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.11731012,11731011 and 12031005)+1 种基金Ten Thousands Talents Plan of Zhejiang Province (Grant No.2018R52042)the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities。
文摘Simultaneously investigating multiple treatments in a single study achieves considerable efficiency in contrast to the traditional two-arm trials.Balancing treatment allocation for influential covariates has become increasingly important in today’s clinical trials.The multi-arm covariate-adaptive randomized clinical trial is one of the most powerful tools to incorporate covariate information and multiple treatments in a single study.Pocock and Simon’s procedure has been extended to the multi-arm case.However,the theoretical properties of multi-arm covariate-adaptive randomization have remained largely elusive for decades.In this paper,we propose a general framework for multi-arm covariate-adaptive designs which also includes the two-arm case,and establish the corresponding theory under widely satisfied conditions.The theoretical results provide new insights into the balance properties of covariate-adaptive randomization procedures and make foundations for most existing statistical inferences under two-arm covariate-adaptive randomization.Furthermore,these open a door to study the theoretical properties of statistical inferences for clinical trials based on multi-arm covariateadaptive randomization procedures.
