ORIGINAL PAPER Natural regeneration of Pinus brutia Ten. in a recreational public forest in Zawita-Kurdistan region, Iraq Hassan Muhamed 1 • Sami Youssef 2 • Ahmed Mustafa 3 • Hishyer Suliman 1 • Aree Abdulqader 1 • Hishyer Mohammed 4 • Richard Michalet 5 Received: 15 August 2017 / Accepted: 5 March 2018 Ó Northeast Forestry University and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Zawita natural forest has recently has been subject to mass recreational activities during spring that have denuded large areas of the forest. It was thus essential to assess regeneration before designing optimizing strate- gies. To this end, we studied the overstory canopy and microhabitat conditions for recruitment of Pinus brutia Ten in 10 plots (20 9 25 m) on the southern aspects where the Zawita natural forest is still present. In total, 1540 regen- erating P. brutia were recorded, 854 seedlings, 597 sap- lings, and 89 trees. Seedlings and saplings were more frequent beyond the canopy than under the canopy of the parent trees. Regeneration requirements differed between seedlings and saplings. The probability of the occurrence of seedlings was negatively correlated with increasing litter depth and increasing soil compaction. The density of sap- lings only showed a positive significant correlation with increasing slope. The nearest neighbor index showed a trend toward a positive spatial association between under- story shrubs with their neighboring seedlings at a mean distance of 1.6 m. Overall, the study highlighted the requirements for seedling regeneration as a relatively open canopy cover, a light understory litter layer, and non- compacted soils. These results are a step towards designing effective management and restoration programs. Keywords Forest structure Á Litter depth Á Regeneration niche Á Spatial pattern Á Soil compaction Introduction Natural forest regeneration is a highly complex process that can be affected by several factors. Recent studies suggest that regeneration niches change over the life cycle of individuals (Delerue et al. 2015; Leverkus et al. 2016; Ghosh et al. 2016), and these changes are known as ontogenetic niche development, i.e., niche requirements become more restrictive with age from seedlings to sap- lings (Quero et al. 2008). The forest understory provides regeneration habitats composed of mineral soil, decaying logs, rocks, and leaf litter that might be considered an establishment niche depending on tree species (Titus and Moral 1998). However, microenvironments suitable for seed germination are not necessarily appropriate for seed- ling establishment or sapling survival (Quero et al. 2008). Bulky litter layers under a pine forest canopy can inhibit Project funding: The work was supported by the Agriculture College of Duhok University. The online version is available at http://www.springerlink.com Corresponding editor: Tao Xu. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-018-0739-x) contains supple- mentary material, which is available to authorized users. & Hassan Muhamed hassan.muhamed@uod.ac 1 Department of Forestry, College of Agriculture, University of Duhok, Duhok, Kurdistan Region, Iraq 2 AMAP (Botany and Modelling of Plant Architecture and Vegetation), University of Montpellier, 34398 Montpellier Cedex 5, France 3 Department of Ecotourism, College of Agriculture, University of Duhok, Duhok, Kurdistan Region, Iraq 4 Directorate of Forestry and Rangelands, Duhok, Kurdistan Region, Iraq 5 UMR CNRS 5805 EPOC, Universite ´ de Bordeaux, Alle ´e Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire CS 50023, 33615 Pessac Cedex, France 123 J. For. Res. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-018-0739-x