Abstract
Pinus densiflora stands are common secondary forest communities on infertile soils in Korea. The stands are results of long severe past biotic pressure such as cutting, burning and grazing. These could be regarded as biotic climax in Korea. Because of their prevalent occurrence, relatively simple species and age composition, and their domestic economic importance, study of their distributional patterns may give some basic knowledge for better utilization of land resources in Korea. To detect distributional patterns and interspecific associations ten pine stands, each of which was homogenious with respect to topography and physiognomy, were subjectively selected from pine stands in Kyunggi Province near Seoul in 1969 and were made object of this study. Four contiguous systematic samples of count for trees, shrubs and seedlings from belt transects were collected from homogeneous areas within ten natural pine stands. The belt transect was 64m or 128m in length, and 1m, 2m or 4m in width. Basic units within the transect ranged from 64 to 256. The data from the contiguous transects were analysed in terms of multiple split-plot experiment. Departure from randomness of stem distribution, i.e., pattern, was tested in terms of variance mean ratio. For the detection of association between species, correlation coefficient was calculated for different block sizes. The values of ${\gamma}$ were tested by the usual t-test. Fine trees within one of the stands showed significant regular distribution through out the blocks. Within other eight stands pines were randomly distributed at basic unit with 4$\times$4m, 2$\times$2m, 2$\times$1m and 1$\times$1m. One significantly clumped distribution at basic unit 2$\times$2m, however, was observed from one of the pine stands. These randomly distributed groups were themselves significantly regularly distributed throughout the blocks for four pine stands. For the other four pine stands, in addition to the random distribution at the basie unit(the primary random group), randomly distributed groups with 32m dimension(the secondary random groups) were also observed. Both the primary and the secondary random groups were significantly regularly distributed at the rest of blocks. Pine seedlings were not distributed randomly thoughout the blocks. Within three of the ten stands they were contagiously distributed. Important shrub species underneath pines such as Querus serrata, Q. acutissima, Leapedeza intermedia, Rhododendron Yedoense var. poukhanenae, Juniperus utilis, Rhododendron mucronulatum var. ciliatum shnwed consistently similar distributional pattern with the pine at each stand. The shrub species pairs; Rhododendron Yedoense var. poukhanenae/Quercus serrata, Rhododendron mucronulatum var. ciliatum/Lespedeza intermedia were significantly negatively associated from 1m to 4m dimensional block sizes but became significantly positively associated from 8m sized blocks on. On the other hand the shrub species pairs; Lespedeza intermedia/Robinia Pseudoacacia, and Lespedeza bicolor var, japonica/Lespedeza intermedia were also significnalty negatively associated from 1m to 8m sized blocks but became significantly positively associated from 16m sized blocks on. The associational pattern between Rhododendron mucronul tun var. poukhanenae and Lespedeza intermedia was not consistent throughout the stands. In some stands negative associations were observed throughout the blocks except NS 32. From these observatons micro-edaphic variation within the pine stands seems not to be great enough to cause distributinal difference of pine trees within the ten pine stands. Among each species and pine seedings, however, the edaphic variation within the pine stands may be great enought to cause distributional variation.