Southeastern floodplain forests are species-rich ecosystems that respond to dynamic interactions between disturbance and hydrologic regimes. Large-scale natural disturbances such as hurricanes influence forest composition and structure not only by damaging and killing overstory trees, but also by altering environmental conditions on the forest floor. In this dissertation, I examined how the composition and structure of floodplain forest ecosystems are regulated by these disturbances, with a particular emphasis on understanding how large woody vines interact with natural disturbances in floodplain forest ecosystems. Lianas are a long-neglected aspect of floodplain forests that influence tree mortality, recruitment, and growth rates and may be responding to environmental changes. Long-term studies of forest dynamics in the Congaree National Park and the Savannah River floodplains in South Carolina, U.S.A., provide ideal settings to study the interactions of hydrologic and disturbance regimes in species-rich forests with a significant large woody vine component.

During the twelve years following Hurricane Hugo in 1989 devastated portions of the old-growth floodplain forest of the Congaree National Park, liana communities have responded to the changes in forest structure. Liana community densities were determined across hydrologic and disturbance gradients in eight 1-ha plots that were established during the winter and spring 1989-90, and re-sampled in 1994, 1998, and 2002. In heavily damaged bottomland hardwood forests, liana densities initially decreased when the host trees were severely damaged but exceeded pre-hurricane densities after twelve years. Stem densities of Toxicodendron radicans, the most common liana, initially decreased by 55% in the most heavily damaged bottomland hardwood forests. In both low- and high-damaged hardwood forests, vine communities experienced increasing recruitment rates and decreasing mortality rates after twelve years. When compared with trees and shrubs, lianas have higher stem mortality rates (5-6% yr-1 over 12 yr) regardless of size in the Congaree floodplain forest. Liana diameter growth rates continue to reflect size- and species-specific differences, as well as colonization patterns and post-hurricane host damage. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This book “Biodiversity of lianas” under the series “Sustainable development and Biodiversity” is unique as it covers a wide array of topics in this subject covering all continents and will constitute a valuable reference material for students, researchers and forest managers who are concerned with biodiversity, forest ecology and sustainable development of forest resources. It contains peer-reviewed chapters from leading academicians and researchers around the world in the field of Plant Ecology, Taxonomy and related areas of Biodiversity Science but, centered on Lianology and includes original research articles, case studies and reviews (regional and global) in biodiversity, ecology and phytogeography and conservation of lianas from temperate, sub-tropical and tropical forests. The interest in lianas has increased over the last two decades. The ultimate goal of this book is to provide an insight into the patterns of liana diversity, distribution, the role of lianas in structuring forest community, and functional ecology (carbon uptake, ecosystem services, dynamics and invasion), biotechnological tool for conservation of lianas and finally summarizes the significance and the need for conservation of lianas in the changing global environmental scenario.

Lianas are woody vines that were the focus of intense study by early ecologists, such as Darwin, who devoted an entire book to the natural history of climbing plants. Over the past quarter century, there has been a resurgence in the study of lianas, and liana are again recognized as important components of many forests, particularly in the tropics. The increasing amount of research on lianas has resulted in a fundamentally deeper understanding of liana ecology, evolution, and life-history, as well as the myriad roles lianas play in forest dynamics and functioning. This book provides insight into the ecology and evolution of lianas, their anatomy, physiology, and natural history, their global abundance and distribution, and their wide-ranging effects on the myriad organisms that inhabit tropical and temperate forests.

From exploitation to preservation, the complex history of one of the Southeast's most important natural areas and South Carolina's only national park Located at the confluence of the Congaree and Wateree Rivers in central South Carolina, Congaree National Park protects the nation's largest intact expanse of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest. Modern visitors to the park enjoy a pristine landscape that seems ancient and untouched by human hands, but in truth its history is far different. In Nature's Return, Mark Kinzer examines the successive waves of inhabitants, visitors, and landowners of this region by synthesizing information from property and census records, studies of forest succession, tree-ring analyses, slave narratives, and historical news accounts. Established in 1976, Congaree National Park contains within its boundaries nearly twenty-seven thousand acres of protected uplands, floodplains, and swamps. Once exploited by humans for farming, cattle grazing, plantation agriculture, and logging, the park area is now used gently for recreation and conservation. Although the impact of farming, grazing, and logging in the park was far less extensive than in other river swamps across the Southeast, it is still evident to those who know where to look. Cultivated in corn and cotton during the nineteenth century, the land became the site of extensive logging operations soon after the Civil War, a practice that continued intermittently into the late twentieth century. From burning canebrakes to clearing fields and logging trees, inhabitants of the lower Congaree valley have modified the floodplain environment both to ensure their survival and, over time, to generate wealth. In this they behaved no differently than people living along other major rivers in the South Atlantic Coastal Plain. Today Congaree National Park is a forest of vast flats and winding sloughs where champion trees dot the landscape. Indeed its history of human use and conservation make it a valuable laboratory for the study not only of flora and fauna but also of anthropology and modern history. As the impact of human disturbance fades, the Congaree's stature as one of the most important natural areas in the eastern United States only continues to grow.

Technical water management measures in the inundation region of southern Moravia significantly affected conditions of terrestrial and water ecosystems. Changes in ecological conditions and reaction of biota in the ecosystems of floodplain forests and meadows and regulated watercourses and retention reservoirs were studied within the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere programme for several years by a multi-disciplinary team of scientific workers. A broad extent of knowledge from many scientific disciplines enables a deeper insight into complexity of ecological relations after an intervention into landscape to ecologists, water managers, foresters, agronomists and biologists of different specializations.