The pantropical genus Begonia is the sixth-largest genus of flowering plants, including 1870 species. The sections of Begonia are used frequently as analogues to genera in other families but, despite ...their taxonomic utility, few of the current sections have been examined in the light of molecular phylogenetic analyses. We present herein the largest, most representative phylogeny of Begonia published to date and a subsequent provisional sectional classification of the genus. We utilised three plastid markers for 574 species and 809 accessions of Begonia and used Hillebrandia as an outgroup to produce a dated phylogeny. The relationships between some species and sections are poorly resolved, but many sections and deeper nodes receive strong support. We recognise 70 sections of Begonia including 5 new sections: Astrothrix, Ephemera, Jackia, Kollmannia, and Stellandrae; 4 sections are reinstated from synonymy: Australes, Exalabegonia, Latistigma and Pereira; and 5 sections are newly synonymised. The new sectional classification is discussed with reference to identifying characters and previous classifications.
•We develop analytical methods for estimating wood production in forest plots.•Our corrections provide suggested methods to minimise three time-sensitive biases.•In Amazonia, uncorrected estimates of ...wood production are underestimated by 13%.
Forest inventory plots are widely used to estimate biomass carbon storage and its change over time. While there has been much debate and exploration of the analytical methods for calculating biomass, the methods used to determine rates of wood production have not been evaluated to the same degree. This affects assessment of ecosystem fluxes and may have wider implications if inventory data are used to parameterise biospheric models, or scaled to large areas in assessments of carbon sequestration. Here we use a dataset of 35 long-term Amazonian forest inventory plots to test different methods of calculating wood production rates. These address potential biases associated with three issues that routinely impact the interpretation of tree measurement data: (1) changes in the point of measurement (POM) of stem diameter as trees grow over time; (2) unequal length of time between censuses; and (3) the treatment of trees that pass the minimum diameter threshold (“recruits”). We derive corrections that control for changing POM height, that account for the unobserved growth of trees that die within census intervals, and that explore different assumptions regarding the growth of recruits during the previous census interval. For our dataset we find that annual aboveground coarse wood production (AGWP; in Mgha−1year−1 of dry matter) is underestimated on average by 9.2% if corrections are not made to control for changes in POM height. Failure to control for the length of sampling intervals results in a mean underestimation of 2.7% in annual AGWP in our plots for a mean interval length of 3.6years. Different methods for treating recruits result in mean differences of up to 8.1% in AGWP. In general, the greater the length of time a plot is sampled for and the greater the time elapsed between censuses, the greater the tendency to underestimate wood production. We recommend that POM changes, census interval length, and the contribution of recruits should all be accounted for when estimating productivity rates, and suggest methods for doing this.
Global patterns of species and evolutionary diversity in plants are primarily determined by a temperature gradient, but precipitation gradients may be more important within the tropics, where plant ...species richness is positively associated with the amount of rainfall. The impact of precipitation on the distribution of evolutionary diversity, however, is largely unexplored. Here we detail how evolutionary diversity varies along precipitation gradients by bringing together a comprehensive database on the composition of angiosperm tree communities across lowland tropical South America (2,025 inventories from wet to arid biomes), and a new, large-scale phylogenetic hypothesis for the genera that occur in these ecosystems. We find a marked reduction in the evolutionary diversity of communities at low precipitation. However, unlike species richness, evolutionary diversity does not continually increase with rainfall. Rather, our results show that the greatest evolutionary diversity is found in intermediate precipitation regimes, and that there is a decline in evolutionary diversity above 1,490 mm of mean annual rainfall. If conservation is to prioritise evolutionary diversity, areas of intermediate precipitation that are found in the South American 'arc of deforestation', but which have been neglected in the design of protected area networks in the tropics, merit increased conservation attention.
Less than half of the original two million square kilometers of the Cerrado vegetation remains standing, and there are still many uncertainties as to how to conserve and prioritize remaining areas ...effectively. A key limitation is the continuing lack of geographically-extensive evaluation of ecosystem-level properties across the biome. Here we sought to address this gap by comparing the woody vegetation of the typical cerrado of the Cerrado–Amazonia Transition with that of the core area of the Cerrado in terms of both tree diversity and vegetation biomass. We used 21 one-hectare plots in the transition and 18 in the core to compare key structural parameters (tree height, basal area, and above-ground biomass), and diversity metrics between the regions. We also evaluated the effects of temperature and precipitation on biomass, as well as explored the species diversity versus biomass relationship. We found, for the first time, both that the typical cerrado at the transition holds substantially more biomass than at the core, and that higher temperature and greater precipitation can explain this difference. By contrast, plot-level alpha diversity was almost identical in the two regions. Finally, contrary to some theoretical expectations, we found no positive relationship between species diversity and biomass for the Cerrado woody vegetation. This has implications for the development of effective conservation measures, given that areas with high biomass and importance for the compensation of greenhouse gas emissions are often not those with the greatest diversity.
What determines the seasonal and interannual variation of growth rates in trees in a tropical forest? We explore this question with a novel four-year high-temporal-resolution data set of carbon ...allocation from two forest plots in the Bolivian Amazon. The forests show strong seasonal variation in tree wood growth rates, which are largely explained by shifts in carbon allocation, and not by shifts in total productivity. At the deeper soil plot, there was a clear seasonal trade-off between wood and canopy NPP, while the shallower soils plot showed a contrasting seasonal trade-off between wood and fine roots. Although a strong 2010 drought reduced photosynthesis, NPP remained constant and increased in the six-month period following the drought, which indicates usage of significant nonstructural carbohydrate stores. Following the drought, carbon allocation increased initially towards the canopy, and then in the following year, allocation increased towards fine-root production. Had we only measured woody growth at these sites and inferred total NPP, we would have misinterpreted both the seasonal and interannual responses. In many tropical forest ecosystems, we propose that changing tree growth rates are more likely to reflect shifts in allocation rather than changes in overall productivity. Only a whole NPP allocation perspective can correctly interpret the relationship between changes in growth and changes in productivity.
Increasing biomass in Amazonian forest plots Baker, Timothy R.; Phillips, Oliver L.; Malhi, Yadvinder ...
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences,
03/2004, Letnik:
359, Številka:
1443
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
A previous study by Phillips et al. of changes in the biomass of permanent sample plots in Amazonian forests was used to infer the presence of a regional carbon sink. However, these results generated ...a vigorous debate about sampling and methodological issues. Therefore we present a new analysis of biomass change in old-growth Amazonian forest plots using updated inventory data. We find that across 59 sites, the above-ground dry biomass in trees that are more than 10 cm in diameter (AGB) has increased since plot establishment by 1.22 ± 0.43 Mg per hectare per year (ha−1 yr−1), where 1 ha = 104 m2), or 0.98 ± 0.38 Mg ha−1 yr−1 if individual plot values are weighted by the number of hectare years of monitoring. This significant increase is neither confounded by spatial or temporal variation in wood specific gravity, nor dependent on the allometric equation used to estimate AGB. The conclusion is also robust to uncertainty about diameter measurements for problematic trees: for 34 plots in western Amazon forests a significant increase in AGB is found even with a conservative assumption of zero growth for all trees where diameter measurements were made using optical methods and/or growth rates needed to be estimated following fieldwork. Overall, our results suggest a slightly greater rate of net stand-level change than was reported by Phillips et al. Considering the spatial and temporal scale of sampling and associated studies showing increases in forest growth and stem turnover, the results presented here suggest that the total biomass of these plots has on average increased and that there has been a regional-scale carbon sink in old-growth Amazonian forests during the previous two decades.
The Amazon forest represents one of the world’s largest terrestrial carbon reservoirs. Here, we evaluated the role of soil texture, climate, vegetation, and distance to savanna on the distribution ...and stocks of soil pyrogenic carbon (PyC) in intact forests with no history of recent fire spanning the southern Amazonia forest-Cerrado Zone of Transition (ZOT). In 19 one hectare forest plots, including three Amazonian Dark Earth (ADE, terra preta) sites with high soil PyC, we measured all trees and lianas with diameter ≥ 10 cm and analyzed soil physicochemical properties, including texture and PyC stocks. We quantified PyC stocks as a proportion of total organic carbon using hydrogen pyrolysis. We used multiple linear regression and variance partitioning to determine which variables best explain soil PyC variation. For all forests combined, soil PyC stocks ranged between 0.9 and 6.8 Mg/ha to 30 cm depth (mean 2.3 ± 1.5 Mg/ha) and PyC, on average, represented 4.3% of the total soil organic carbon (SOC). The most parsimonious model (based on AICc) included soil clay content and above-ground biomass (AGB) as the main predictors, explaining 71% of soil PyC variation. After removal of the ADE plots, PyC stocks ranged between 0.9 and 3.8 Mg/ha (mean 1.9 ± 0.8 Mg/ha
–1
) and PyC continued to represent ∼4% of the total SOC. The most parsimonious models without ADE included AGB and sand as the best predictors, with sand and PyC having an inverse relationship, and sand explaining 65% of the soil PyC variation. Partial regression analysis did not identify any of the components (climatic, environmental, and edaphic), pure or shared, as important in explaining soil PyC variation with or without ADE plots. We observed a substantial amount of soil PyC, even excluding ADE forests; however, contrary to expectations, soil PyC stocks were not higher nearer to the fire-dependent Cerrado than more humid regions of Amazonia. Our findings that soil texture and AGB explain the distribution and amount of soil PyC in ZOT forests will help to improve model estimates of SOC change with further climatic warming.
Ecological orthodoxy suggests that old-growth forests should be close to dynamic equilibrium, but this view has been challenged by recent findings that neotropical forests are accumulating carbon and ...biomass, possibly in response to the increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. However, it is unclear whether the recent increase in tree biomass has been accompanied by a shift in community composition. Such changes could reduce or enhance the carbon storage potential of old-growth forests in the long term. Here we show that non-fragmented Amazon forests are experiencing a concerted increase in the density, basal area and mean size of woody climbing plants (lianas). Over the last two decades of the twentieth century the dominance of large lianas relative to trees has increased by 1.7-4.6% a year. Lianas enhance tree mortality and suppress tree growth, so their rapid increase implies that the tropical terrestrial carbon sink may shut down sooner than current models suggest. Predictions of future tropical carbon fluxes will need to account for the changing composition and dynamics of supposedly undisturbed forests.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The carbon sink capacity of tropical forests is substantially affected by tree mortality. However, the main drivers of tropical tree death remain largely unknown. Here we present a pan-Amazonian ...assessment of how and why trees die, analysing over 120,000 trees representing > 3800 species from 189 long-term RAINFOR forest plots. While tree mortality rates vary greatly Amazon-wide, on average trees are as likely to die standing as they are broken or uprooted-modes of death with different ecological consequences. Species-level growth rate is the single most important predictor of tree death in Amazonia, with faster-growing species being at higher risk. Within species, however, the slowest-growing trees are at greatest risk while the effect of tree size varies across the basin. In the driest Amazonian region species-level bioclimatic distributional patterns also predict the risk of death, suggesting that these forests are experiencing climatic conditions beyond their adaptative limits. These results provide not only a holistic pan-Amazonian picture of tree death but large-scale evidence for the overarching importance of the growth-survival trade-off in driving tropical tree mortality.
As countries advance in greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting for climate change mitigation, consistent estimates of aboveground net biomass change (∆AGB) are needed. Countries with limited forest ...monitoring capabilities in the tropics and subtropics rely on IPCC 2006 default ∆AGB rates, which are values per ecological zone, per continent. Similarly, research into forest biomass change at a large scale also makes use of these rates. IPCC 2006 default rates come from a handful of studies, provide no uncertainty indications and do not distinguish between older secondary forests and old‐growth forests. As part of the 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, we incorporate ∆AGB data available from 2006 onwards, comprising 176 chronosequences in secondary forests and 536 permanent plots in old‐growth and managed/logged forests located in 42 countries in Africa, North and South America and Asia. We generated ∆AGB rate estimates for younger secondary forests (≤20 years), older secondary forests (>20 years and up to 100 years) and old‐growth forests, and accounted for uncertainties in our estimates. In tropical rainforests, for which data availability was the highest, our ∆AGB rate estimates ranged from 3.4 (Asia) to 7.6 (Africa) Mg ha−1 year−1 in younger secondary forests, from 2.3 (North and South America) to 3.5 (Africa) Mg ha−1 year−1 in older secondary forests, and 0.7 (Asia) to 1.3 (Africa) Mg ha−1 year−1 in old‐growth forests. We provide a rigorous and traceable refinement of the IPCC 2006 default rates in tropical and subtropical ecological zones, and identify which areas require more research on ∆AGB. In this respect, this study should be considered as an important step towards quantifying the role of tropical and subtropical forests as carbon sinks with higher accuracy; our new rates can be used for large‐scale GHG accounting by governmental bodies, nongovernmental organizations and in scientific research.
As countries advance in greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting for climate change mitigation, consistent estimates of aboveground biomass change (∆AGB) in natural forests are needed. Countries with limited forest monitoring capabilities in the (sub)tropics rely on the 2006 IPCC guidelines for default ∆AGB rates. This study provides refined default ∆AGB rate estimates based on forest plot data in younger secondary forests, older secondary forests and old‐growth forests, located in 42 countries across (sub)tropical ecozones. These new estimates contribute towards the 2019 IPCC Refinement and can be used for large‐scale GHG accounting by governmental bodies, nongovernmental organizations and in scientific research.
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