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Forestry Advance Access originally published online on February 5, 2008
Forestry 2008 81(1):45-57; doi:10.1093/forestry/cpm043
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© Institute of Chartered Foresters, 2008. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Structure, reproduction and flood-induced dynamics of riparian Tugai forests at the Tarim River in Xinjiang, NW China

Niels Thevs1,*, Stefan Zerbe1, Martin Schnittler1, Nurbay Abdusalih2 and Michael Succow1

1 Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology, University Greifswald, Grimmer Strasse 88, D-17487 Greifswald, Germany
2 Institute of Resource and Environmental Sciences, Xinjiang University, Shengli Lu 14, 830046 Urumqi, China

* Corresponding author. E-mail: niels.thevs{at}uni-greifswald.de


  Abstract

Tugai forests are the riparian forests along the rivers in the continental desert regions of Central Asia, i.e. the Tarim River, Amu Darya and Syr Darya. They mainly consist of Populus euphratica Oliv., Populus pruinosa Schrenk. and Elaeagnus oxycarpa Schltdl. As a consequence of land opening campaigns, large areas of Tugai forests were destroyed after the 1950s. Due to excessive use of water for irrigation, the remaining Tugai forests are under severe threat. Near natural Tugai forests still exist along the Tarim middle reaches in the Tarim Huyanglin Nature Reserve, Xinjiang, NW China. There is a gap in understanding, how the seedlings of P. euphratica establish as trees which continuously connect to the groundwater. Therefore, the set of conditions which must be met for germination and successful establishment, i.e. formation of Tugai forests, was investigated along a representative transect still under natural conditions. P. euphratica seedlings germinate in belts during the retreat of the summer flood on freshly deposited sites bare of other vegetation. Such germination sites are formed by river dynamics. While germination takes place regularly in the study area, successful establishment is restricted to few germination events. Seedlings face dropping groundwater levels during spring and early summer of the second year after germination. Therefore, for successful establishment, it is essential that the flood of the second year starts in time and is high enough, in order to replenish the groundwater. Furthermore, clayey soil layers in the subsoil may play a role for successful establishment, too, as they store water better than sandy soil layers.

Received 21 February 2007.
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