Temporal variations of forest floor properties in the Coastal Western Hemlock zone of southern British Columbia

We examined temporal changes in the forest floor across a zonal chronosequence represented by four stages of stand development: stand initiation ( 350-year-old) stands. All stages, except the old-growth, had a similar history of disturbance: clear-cutting without subsequent burning and silvicultural treatments. Considering thickness and chemical and biotic properties of the LF and H horizons, the most dissimilar stages were the stand initiation and old-growth, and the most similar stages were the stem exclusion and understory reinitiation. Compared with the old-growth stage, the stand initiation stage had about the same thickness of LF and H horizons and bacterial biomass but lower acidity, C:N ratio, fungal biomass, and soil fauna density and higher N mineralization. The stem exclusion and understory reinitiation stages had, in general, properties intermediate between the...