Human activity negatively affects the sustainability of forest ecosystems globally. Disturbed forests may or may not recover by themselves in a certain period of time. However, it is still unclear as to what parameters can be used to reasonably predict the potential for self-recovery of human-disturbed forests. Here, we combined seed rain, soil seed bank, and seed emergence experiments to evaluate the potential for self-recovery of a highly disturbed, tropical, mixed deciduous forest in northeastern Thailand. Our results show a limited potential for self-recovery of this forest due to low seedling input and storage and an extremely high mortality rate during the drought period. There were 15 tree species of seedlings present during the regeneration period in comparison with a total number of 56 tree species in current standing vegetation. During the dry season, only four tree seedling species survived, and the highest mortality rate reached 83.87%. We also found that the correspondence between the combined number of species and composition of plant communities obtained from seed rain, soil seed bank, and seedling emergence experiments and the standing vegetation was poor. We clearly show the temporal dynamics of the seed rain and seedling communities, which are driven by different plant reproductive phenology and dispersal mechanisms, and drought coupled with mortality. We conclude that this highly disturbed forest needs a management plan and could not recover by itself in a short period of time. We recommend the use of external seed and seedling supplies and the maintenance of soil water content (i.e., shading) during periods of drought in order to help increase seedling abundances and species richness, and to reduce the mortality rate.

中文翻译：

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种子雨，土壤种子库和幼苗出苗表明高度受干扰的热带混合落叶林中自我恢复的潜力有限

人类活动对全球森林生态系统的可持续性产生负面影响。受干扰的森林在一定时期内可能会或可能不会自行恢复。但是，尚不清楚什么参数可以用来合理预测受人为干扰的森林自我恢复的潜力。在这里，我们结合了种子雨，土壤种子库和种子出苗实验，来评估泰国东北部高度受干扰的热带混合落叶林自我恢复的潜力。我们的结果表明，由于幼苗输入和存储量少，干旱期间死亡率极高，该森林自我恢复的潜力有限。再生期间存在15种树种，而目前的站立植被中共有56种树种。在干旱季节，只有4种树苗存活，最高死亡率达到83.87％。我们还发现，从种子雨，土壤种子库和幼苗出苗实验获得的物种总数与植物群落组成之间的对应关系不佳，并且常绿植被很差。我们清楚地显示了种子雨和幼苗群落的时间动态，这是由不同的植物生殖物候和扩散机制以及干旱与死亡率共同驱动的。我们得出的结论是，这个受严重干扰的森林需要一项管理计划，并且无法在短时间内自行恢复。我们建议使用外部种子和幼苗供应品，并保持土壤水分含量（即