Monitoring of woody species regeneration was done in 2003, 2005 and 2007 on 48 subplots of 116 m2 on pasture, fern, and shrub sites.
Half of the subsamples were randomly selected and manually treated by cutting back all competing herbaceous species with a machete
every 4 months from 2003 to 2005. Competing species refers to dominant, exotic and aggressive species such as grasses (S.
sphacelata) in the Pasture site, and exotic fern (P. arachnoideum) in the Bracken and Shrub sites, woody native species were not removed.
Palomeque, X.; Günter, S.; Siddons, D.; Hildebrandt, P.; Stimm, B.; Aguirre, N.; Arias, R. & Weber, M. (2017): Natural or assisted succession as approach of forest recovery on abandoned lands with different land use history in the Andes of Southern Ecuador. New Forests 1(1), 1-10
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11056-017-9590-8.