Kamil Král

Silva Tarouca Research Institute · Department of Forest Ecology

One mechanism proposed to explain high species diversity in tropical systems is strong negative conspecific density dependence (CDD), which reduces recruitment of juveniles in proximity to conspecific adult plants. Although evidence shows that plant-specific soil pathogens can drive negative CDD, trees also form key mutualisms with mycorrhizal fung...

Mistletoe recognition and sampling remain the challenging tasks for arborists, dendrologists, forest ecologists and other specialists because of the low accessibility of the canopy of their host trees. In this review, smart decisions for mistletoe detection on the basis of airborne platforms are discussed. The airborne remote sensing (ARS) has the...

The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) is a waveform lidar instrument on the International Space Station used to estimate aboveground biomass density (AGBD) in temperate and tropical forests. Algorithms to predict footprint AGBD from GEDI relative height (RH) metrics were developed from simulated waveforms with leaf-on (growing season)...

Aim: Global forests and their structural and functional features are shaped by many mechanisms that impact tree vital rates. Although many studies have tried to quantify how specific mechanisms influence vital rates, their relative importance among forests remains unclear. We aimed to assess the patterns of variation in vital rates among species an...

Tree size shapes forest carbon dynamics and determines how trees interact with their environment, including a changing climate. Here, we conduct the first global analysis of among‐site differences in how aboveground biomass stocks and fluxes are distributed with tree size. We analyzed repeat tree censuses from 25 large‐scale (4–52 ha) forest plots...

is collecting spaceborne full waveform lidar data with a primary science goal of producing accurate estimates of forest aboveground biomass density (AGBD). This paper presents the development of the models used to create GEDI's footprint-level (~25 m) AGBD (GEDI04_A) product, including a description of the datasets used and the procedure for final...

Allometric equations for calculation of tree above‐ground biomass ( AGB ) form the basis for estimates of forest carbon storage and exchange with the atmosphere. While standard models exist to calculate forest biomass across the tropics, we lack a standardized tool for computing AGB across boreal and temperate regions that comprise the global extra...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) and ectomycorrhizal (EcM) associations are critical for host-tree performance. However, how mycorrhizal associations correlate with the latitudinal tree beta-diversity remains untested. Using a global dataset of 45 forest plots representing 2,804,270 trees across 3840 species, we test how AM and EcM trees contribute to t...

ForestGEO is a network of scientists and long-term forest dynamics plots (FDPs) spanning the Earth's major forest types. ForestGEO's mission is to advance understanding of the diversity and dynamics of forests and to strengthen global capacity for forest science research. ForestGEO is unique among forest plot networks in its large-scale plot dimens...

We applied a supervised individual-tree segmentation algorithm to ultra-high-density drone lidar in a temperate mountain forest in the southern Czech Republic. We compared the number of trees correctly segmented, stem diameter at breast height (DBH), and tree height from drone-lidar segmentations to field-inventory measurements and segmentations fr...

It is known that biotic interactions are the key to species coexistence and maintenance of species diversity. Traditional studies focus overwhelmingly on pairwise interactions between organisms, ignoring complex higher-order interactions (HOIs). In this study, we present a novel method of calculating individual-level HOIs for trees, and use this me...

It is known that biotic interactions are the key to species coexistence and maintenance of species diversity. Traditional studies focus overwhelmingly on pairwise interactions between organisms, ignoring complex higher-order interactions (HOIs). In this study, we present a novel method of calculating individual-level HOIs for trees, and use this me...

Despite improvements of dendrochronological techniques in many forest ecosystems, studies describing the growth responses of trees following disturbance events including comprehensive data on factors and processes behind tree-growth release are rare, especially for European temperate forests, limiting the interpretation and generalization of dendro...

Current and planned space missions will produce aboveground biomass density data products at varying spatial resolution. Calibration and validation of these data products is critically dependent on the existence of field estimates of aboveground biomass and coincident remote sensing data from airborne or terrestrial lidar. There are few places that...

Symbiotic nitrogen (N)‐fixing trees can provide large quantities of new N to ecosystems, but only if they are sufficiently abundant. The overall abundance and latitudinal abundance distributions of N‐fixing trees are well characterised in the Americas, but less well outside the Americas. Here, we characterised the abundance of N‐fixing trees in a n...

Climate is widely recognised as an important determinant of the latitudinal diversity gradient. However, most existing studies make no distinction between direct and indirect effects of climate, which substantially hinders our understanding of how climate constrains biodiversity globally. Using data from 35 large forest plots, we test hypothesised...

Climate is widely recognised as an important determinant of the latitudinal diversity gradient. However, most existing studies make no distinction between direct and indirect effects of climate, which substantially hinders our understanding of how climate constrains biodiversity globally. Using data from 35 large forest plots, we test hypothesised...

The diameter growth of a tree reflects the success of that tree in competition. We investigated patterns of Fagus sylvatica diameter growth in the Žofín Forest Dynamics Plot, which is part of Smithsonian's Forest Global Earth Observatory as a research plot representing European natural mixed temperate forests. We focused primarily on the spatial pa...

There are many indications that for a true understanding of aboveground canopy competition, the concept of symmetric trees is oversimplified and unsatisfactory; in spite of that, this concept is still commonly used in forest ecology research. In this study we analyzed and quantified the effect of tree/crown asymmetry on crown-to-crown interactions...

Motivation: The BioTIME database contains raw data on species identities and abundances in ecological assemblages through time. These data enable users to calculate temporal trends in biodiversity within and amongst assemblages using a broad range of metrics. BioTIME is being developed as a community-led open-source database of biodiversity time se...

Motivation: The BioTIME database contains raw data on species identities and abundances in ecological assemblages through time. These data enable users to calculate temporal trends in biodiversity within and amongst assemblages using a broad range of metrics. BioTIME is being developed as a community-led open-source database of biodiversity time se...

Motivation: The BioTIME database contains raw data on species identities and abundances in ecological assemblages through time. These data enable users to calculate temporal trends in biodiversity within and amongst assemblages using a broad range of metrics. BioTIME is being developed as a community led open-source database of biodiversity time se...

Hülsmann and Hartig suggest that ecological mechanisms other than specialized natural enemies or intraspecific competition contribute to our estimates of conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD). To address their concern, we show that our results are not the result of a methodological artifact and present a null-model analysis that demonstrat...

Chisholm and Fung claim that our method of estimating conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD) in recruitment is systematically biased, and present an alternative method that shows no latitudinal pattern in CNDD. We demonstrate that their approach produces strongly biased estimates of CNDD, explaining why they do not detect a latitudinal patt...

Aim To examine the contribution of large‐diameter trees to biomass, stand structure, and species richness across forest biomes. Location Global. Time period Early 21st century. Major taxa studied Woody plants. Methods We examined the contribution of large trees to forest density, richness and biomass using a global network of 48 large (from 2 t...

Questions Recently there have been vital discussions about the validity of the European patch‐mosaic conceptual model of forest dynamics – the traditional concept of a shifting patch‐mosaic of development stages and phases, also known as the forest cycle concept. Here we try to answer the fundamental questions of this debate: (1) how much do forest...

Motivation: The BioTIME database contains raw data on species identities and abundances in ecological assemblages through time. These data enable users to calculate temporal trends in biodiversity within and amongst assemblages using a broad range of metrics. BioTIME is being developed as a community-led open-source database of biodiversity time se...

Maintaining tree diversity Negative interaction among plant species is known as conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD). This ecological pattern is thought to maintain higher species diversity in the tropics. LaManna et al. tested this hypothesis by comparing how tree species diversity changes with the intensity of local biotic interactions...

Terrestrial laser scanning is a powerful technology for capturing the three-dimensional structure of forests with a high level of detail and accuracy. Over the last decade, many algorithms have been developed to extract various tree parameters from terrestrial laser scanning data. Here we present 3D Forest, an open-source non-platform-specific soft...

Analysis of sensitivity of DBH computation using logistic regression- goodness of fit. The goodness of fit was evaluated using analysis of deviance table where deviance column gives difference between models as variables (i.e. factors) are added to the model in turn. (XLSX)

Dataset for all analysis presented in paper. Zipped files with data for analysis. File Automatic_segmentation-data.xlsx contains results of automatic segmentation. File DBH_height-data.xlsx contains manual data and corresponding computed data from 3D Forest. File Sensitivity-results-LSR.xlsx contains result of sensitivity analysis with all factors...

Simple convex geometrical objects with computed concave hull. Point clouds (black dots) arranged in simple convex geometrical 3D objects of known metrics represented by concave triangulation by 0.1m horizontal sections provided by 3D Forest (blue surface). (PNG)

Complex concave geometrical objects with computed concave hull. Point clouds (black dots) arranged in complex concave geometrical 3D objects of known metrics represented by concave triangulation by 0.1m horizontal sections provided by 3D Forest (blue surface). (PNG)

The effect of factors S and N on the mapping accuracy of tree segmentation. Bold numbers denote statistically significant results. Asterisks denote the group of best segmentation settings (factor levels) according to Nemenyi post hoc test. (XLSX)

The effect of factors S and N on the omission error of the tree segmentation. Bold numbers denote statistically significant results. Asterisks denote the group of best segmentation settings (factor levels) according to Nemenyi post hoc test. (XLSX)

Verification of tree crown metrics provided by 3D Forest. (DOCX)

Simple convex geometrical objects with computed convex hull. Point clouds (black dots) arranged in simple convex geometrical 3D objects of known metrics represented by 3D convex hulls produced by 3D Forest (blue surface). (PNG)

Complex concave geometrical objects with computed convex hull. Point clouds (black dots) arranged in complex concave geometrical 3D objects of known metrics represented by 3D convex hull made in 3D Forest (blue surface). (PNG)

Various parameters of 3D shapes as calculated by 3D Forest and compared to reference values. Basic parameters (height, length and width), planar projection, surface and volume of 3D geometrical shapes computed by 3D Forest and compared to reference values. (XLSX)

The effect of factors S and N on the commission error of tree segmentation. Bold numbers denote statistically significant results. Asterisks denote the group of best segmentation settings (factor levels) according to Nemenyi post hoc test. (XLSX)

European beech is one of the most important European trees, not only because of its expected role in the face of climate change, but also as a frequent species in forest reserves, national parks and the NATURA 2000 network. For such areas, naturalness and biodiversity conservation are significant issues, in which the presence of deadwood plays an i...

Conceptual models that describe temperate forest dynamics differ substantially between Europe and America. In Europe, the concept of the forest cycle describes a sequentially shifting fine-scale mosaic of patches in different phases of forest development. In North America, the descriptive concept is largely based on severe coarse-scale disturbances...

Fagus sylvatica (European beech) populations in Central Europe are currently expanding their dominance in many forest types. In this study we focused on the spatio-temporal dynamics of beech recruitment as a mechanism for successful expansion. Specifically we investigated: (1) the developmental trend of the tree community composition and spatial pa...

Supplementary Material to the Paper: Kral_et_al_2016_Fine-scale patch mosaics in American forests

Because of some arbitrary decisions in recent dendrochronological research on forest disturbance histories, describing the actual growth responses of trees to disturbance events is still an issue of great importance. This is even more important in temperate beech-dominated old-growth forests driven by fine-scale disturbances, where a majority of gr...

European beech (Fagus sylvatica) increases its dominance in various forest types in Central Europe. In this context we investigated a very exceptional process, in which beech have been partly outcompeted by sycamore maple (Acer pseudoplatanus) in unmanaged forest without severe disturbances. Main research questions were as follows: (i) How did the...

The main focus of this paper was the dynamics of Fraxinus angustifolia tree spatial patterns after the frequency of flooding events has markedly declined, especially as regards competition with Carpinus betulus and Acer campestre, the most rapidly expanding species in alluvial hardwood forests in Central Europe. The study was conducted in alluvial...

Within the area of Central Europe, and especially in the Czech Republic (and former Czechoslovakia), geobiocoenological landscape differentiation has been applied for more than 40 years to create a spatial model of the natural (potential) condition of geobiocoenoses in the landscape. Because long-term objective of geobiocoenology is to contribute t...

There are hundreds of scientific papers dealing with the issues of biodiversity and extinction debt in temperate forests, both of which are partly related to the absence of deadwood. Some studies have derived habitat thresholds for deadwood (according to species, size, spatial distribution) as baselines for management recommendations. But a majorit...

Global change is impacting forests worldwide, threatening biodiversity and ecosystem services including climate regulation. Understanding how forests respond is critical to forest conservation and climate protection. This review describes an international network of 59 long-term forest dynamics research sites (CTFS-ForestGEO) useful for characteriz...

The decline of Abies alba (fir) in natural fir–beech forests in Europe has fascinated scientists for over a century. During this period, Fagus sylvatica (beech) became the dominant species in this forest type. We hypothesised that (1) the success of beech over fir is significantly connected with the fact that beech suffers less than fir from the pr...

The shifting mosaic of patches in different phases of forest development is a widely used framework for describing stand dynamics, structure and biodiversity in European temperate forests. In spite of the common application of patch mapping of developmental stages/phases, an objective and quantified evaluation of patch mosaics has been missing. Thi...

Supplementary Material to the paper

Question We connected tree‐census and dendrochronological research data (74.2 ha) in order to answer the following questions: How do we apply an individual‐based approach, which allows us to abandon the traditional patch model, in the research of disturbance history through spatial scales? What is the disturbance history of the natural forest? How...

QuestionsWhat are the differences between the tree spatial patterns (TSP) of various recruit and mortality waves in alluvial hardwood forests and mountain fir–beech forests? Are there any statistically significant differences between the mean TSP of these forest types? Are these differences stable over time? LocationAlluvial floodplain forests at t...

With the development of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and its applications in forestry, the question arises as to how the scanners should be ideally placed for the best possible data acquisition. We searched for an optimal scanning distance for recognition of stems in natural beech-dominated forests, focusing particularly on the shading effect o...

The pine stand in the Havrani Skala locality in the Bohemian Switzerland National Park was affected by an extensive mixed-severity wildfire in summer 2006. The fire severity, fire type and fire extent were assessed by various fire severity measures collected in the field (mean bole char height on stems on sample plots, content of oxidizable C and t...

The paper presents a list of local geographical names and their alternatives quoted in entomological literature related to the Socotra Archipelago. It includes their exact localization with coordinates and visualization on the map.

Peat mining has a serious impact on the Pinus rotundata Link habitat. The possibility of sustaining a vital Pinus rotundata bog forest on undisturbed edges of mined peat bog was assessed. 28.7 ha of undisturbed edge of Borkovická blata peat bog were sampled by regular grid of circular sample plots. Data about tree layer, natural regeneration of woo...

Peat mining has a serious impact on the Pinus rotundata Link habitat. The possibility of sustaining a vital Pinus rotundata bog forest on undisturbed edges of mined peat bog was assessed. 28.7 ha of undisturbed edge of Borkovická blata peat bog were sampled by regular grid of circular sample plots. Data about tree layer, natural regeneration of woo...

Principal questions: 1) Are deciduous and mixed Central European forests and North American temperate deciduous forests comparable at the fine-scale of stand structures? 2) Is it possible to describe the observed fine-scale stand structures by the European conceptual model of forest cycles? 3) What are the quantitative and qualitative characteri...