The survey on the sapling individuals of selected four key species in CSPs fills out the information gap in term of demographical population dynamic analysis. Integrating the census of target trees (including the individuals with larger than 10 cm DBH in subplots 11,21,31,12,32,13,23,33, and individuals with larger than 3 cm DBH in subplot 22 )to this piece of data, the fecundity, recruitment and mortality will be revealed; so that the demographic dynamics of the species over time, and the quantitative assessment of the long-term stability or development of the populations in the successional stages of the forests will be investigated. The sapling individuals among all CSPs in GNNR were surveyed by means of labelling, tree height, tree diameter and tree living status were assessed. Four species were considered as key species of this study: Schima superba, Quercus serrata, Lithocarpus glaber, Castanopsis eyrei because of their high abundances. This inventory was carried out in a half-year interval from April 2011 to April 2012.

Selection of target species: the two most abundant evergreen and deciduous species were selected. Individuals belonging to these species which are not surveyed by SP1e/SP1c (in most situations saplings and small size trees) were labelled with four digitis before which "2S_" was indicated. Then, the total height and the stem diameters (basal diameter / diameter at breast height) were measured. If the tree individual is not single stem, the number of the stems was counted. The status such as dead, new germinated, broken stem/branch etc. were documented in the column of comments.

Comparative Study sites, BEF China Experiment, Gutianshan National Nature Reserve (GNNR), China. The GNNR is located in the western part of Zhejiang Province (29°8'18"-29°17'29" N, 118°2'14'-118°11'12'' E). The forest is representative of Chinese broad-leaved forests (Wu 1980, Hu and Yu 2008, Legendre et al. 2009) with evergreren species dominating the forest in number of individuals (Yu et al. 2001) but with approximately similar proportions of deciduous species in terms of species number (Lou and Jin 2000).

During this time frame, the inventory was conducted three times (April 2011, September 2011 and March/April 2012 respectively).

Sapling tree individuals of Schima superba, Lithocarpus glaber, Quercus serrata and Castanopsis eyrei in all 27 CSPs. If the survey abundance reached to 100 individuals in 22 subplot, the remaining subplots were not further surveyed. If the survey abundance of individuals did not reach to 100 in 22 subplots, other subplots will be randomly selected until the abundance of the collected individuals exceeds 100.