[Forest recovery state in wind disaster area of Changbai Mountains, Northeast China]

Based on the field investigation in windfall areas of Changbai Mountains, this paper studied the community recovery characteristics of broad-leaved Korean pine forest (BKPF), spruce fir forest (SFF), and Erman's birch forest (EBF) that were disturbed by wind disaster 23 years ago. The recovery rate of these three forest types was in the order of BKPF > SFF > EBF, and their total community index was 0.49, 0.44, and 0.33, respectively. The effects of the wind disaster on the forest tree species composition and diversity were different. In BKPF, the total number of trees increased significantly, but the tree species number and alpha diversity index had no significant change; in SFF, only the Shannon diversity index and Simpson dominance index decreased significantly; while in EBF, all diversity indices except Pielou evenness index had significant decrease. The responses of dominance tree composition and regeneration to the wind disaster depended on forest types. Comparing with the plots not suffered from wind disaster, the BKPF under wind disaster disturbance had greatly different dominance tree compositions, but the difference in both SFF and EBF was not significant. The BKPF's sapling regeneration was fairly good, while the SFF's was small, and EBF almost had no sapling regeneration. All the results suggested that the effects of wind disaster disturbance on the test forest ecosystems in study areas was not removed even after 23 years, and the recovery of forest after wind disaster disturbance needs a relatively long time.