Forests are major components of the global carbon cycle, providing substantial feedback to atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Our ability to understand and predict changes in the forest ...carbon cycle--particularly net primary productivity and carbon storage--increasingly relies on models that represent biological processes across several scales of biological organization, from tree leaves to forest stands. Yet, despite advances in our understanding of productivity at the scales of leaves and stands, no consensus exists about the nature of productivity at the scale of the individual tree, in part because we lack a broad empirical assessment of whether rates of absolute tree mass growth (and thus carbon accumulation) decrease, remain constant, or increase as trees increase in size and age. Here we present a global analysis of 403 tropical and temperate tree species, showing that for most species mass growth rate increases continuously with tree size. Thus, large, old trees do not act simply as senescent carbon reservoirs but actively fix large amounts of carbon compared to smaller trees; at the extreme, a single big tree can add the same amount of carbon to the forest within a year as is contained in an entire mid-sized tree. The apparent paradoxes of individual tree growth increasing with tree size despite declining leaf-level and stand-level productivity can be explained, respectively, by increases in a tree's total leaf area that outpace declines in productivity per unit of leaf area and, among other factors, age-related reductions in population density. Our results resolve conflicting assumptions about the nature of tree growth, inform efforts to undertand and model forest carbon dynamics, and have additional implications for theories of resource allocation and plant senescence.
Tropical tree communities are shaped by local-scale habitat heterogeneity in the form of topographic and edaphic variation, but the life-history stage at which habitat associations develop remains ...poorly understood. This is due, in part, to the fact that previous studies have not accounted for the widely disparate sample sizes (number of stems) that result when trees are divided into size classes. We demonstrate that the observed habitat structuring of a community is directly related to the number of individuals in the community. We then compare the relative importance of habitat heterogeneity to tree community structure for saplings, juveniles and adult trees within seven large (24–50 ha) tropical forest dynamics plots while controlling for sample size. Changes in habitat structuring through tree life stages were small and inconsistent among life stages and study sites. Where found, these differences were an order of magnitude smaller than the findings of previous studies that did not control for sample size. Moreover, community structure and composition were very similar among tree sub-communities of different life stages. We conclude that the structure of these tropical tree communities is established by the time trees are large enough to be included in the census (1 cm diameter at breast height), which indicates that habitat filtering occurs during earlier life stages.
With its unique combination of excellent timing properties and good energy resolution, LaBr3:Ce detectors have proven to be effective tool in gamma spectroscopy and in particular fast-timing studies. ...Eight 2” x 2” LaBr3:Ce detectors used in conjunction with the 16 channel all-digital waveform 500 MHz acquisition module, PIXIE-16 were commissioned at iThemba Laboratory for Accelerator Based Sciences, South Africa. The results presented here give insight of the performance of the 2” x 2” LaBr3 detectors when used in conjunction with a digital pulse processing (DPP) module and electronic read-out module. Initial commissioning experiments were done using radioactive sources, including 60Co, 152Eu and 67Ga. The detectors were then exposed to an in-beam environment using the AFRODITE array with targets 45Sc and 64Ni, with a proton beam energy of 27 MeV.
While the importance of local-scale habitat niches in shaping tree species turnover along environmental gradients in tropical forests is well appreciated, relatively little is known about the ...influence of phylogenetic signal in species’habitat niches in shaping local community structure. We used detailed maps of the soil resource and topographic variation within eight 24–50 ha tropical forest plots combined with species phylogenies created from the APG III phylogeny to examine how phylogenetic beta diversity (indicating the degree of phylogenetic similarity of two communities) was related to environmental gradients within tropical tree communities. Using distance-based redundancy analysis we found that phylogenetic beta diversity, expressed as either nearest neighbor distance or mean pairwise distance, was significantly related to both soil and topographic variation in all study sites. In general, more phylogenetic beta diversity within a forest plot was explained by environmental variables this was expressed as nearest neighbor distance versus mean pairwise distance (3.0–10.3 % and 0.4–8.8 % of variation explained among plots, respectively), and more variation was explained by soil resource variables than topographic variables using either phylogenetic beta diversity metric. We also found that patterns of phylogenetic beta diversity expressed as nearest neighbor distance were consistent with previously observed patterns of niche similarity among congeneric species pairs in these plots. These results indicate the importance of phylogenetic signal in local habitat niches in shaping the phylogenetic structure of tropical tree communities, especially at the level of close phylogenetic neighbors, where similarity in habitat niches is most strongly preserved.
Large tropical trees and a few dominant species were recently identified as the main structuring elements of tropical forests. However, such result did not translate yet into quantitative approaches ...which are essential to understand, predict and monitor forest functions and composition over large, often poorly accessible territories. Here we show that the above-ground biomass (AGB) of the whole forest can be predicted from a few large trees and that the relationship is proved strikingly stable in 175 1-ha plots investigated across 8 sites spanning Central Africa. We designed a generic model predicting AGB with an error of 14% when based on only 5% of the stems, which points to universality in forest structural properties. For the first time in Africa, we identified some dominant species that disproportionally contribute to forest AGB with 1.5% of recorded species accounting for over 50% of the stock of AGB. Consequently, focusing on large trees and dominant species provides precise information on the whole forest stand. This offers new perspectives for understanding the functioning of tropical forests and opens new doors for the development of innovative monitoring strategies.
Accurately monitoring tropical forest carbon stocks is a challenge that remains outstanding. Allometric models that consider tree diameter, height and wood density as predictors are currently used in ...most tropical forest carbon studies. In particular, a pantropical biomass model has been widely used for approximately a decade, and its most recent version will certainly constitute a reference model in the coming years. However, this reference model shows a systematic bias towards the largest trees. Because large trees are key drivers of forest carbon stocks and dynamics, understanding the origin and the consequences of this bias is of utmost concern. In this study, we compiled a unique tree mass data set of 673 trees destructively sampled in five tropical countries (101 trees > 100 cm in diameter) and an original data set of 130 forest plots (1 ha) from central Africa to quantify the prediction error of biomass allometric models at the individual and plot levels when explicitly taking crown mass variations into account or not doing so. We first showed that the proportion of crown to total tree aboveground biomass is highly variable among trees, ranging from 3 to 88 %. This proportion was constant on average for trees < 10 Mg (mean of 34 %) but, above this threshold, increased sharply with tree mass and exceeded 50 % on average for trees ≥ 45 Mg. This increase coincided with a progressive deviation between the pantropical biomass model estimations and actual tree mass. Taking a crown mass proxy into account in a newly developed model consistently removed the bias observed for large trees (> 1 Mg) and reduced the range of plot-level error (in %) from −23; 16 to 0; 10. The disproportionally higher allocation of large trees to crown mass may thus explain the bias observed recently in the reference pantropical model. This bias leads to far-from-negligible, but often overlooked, systematic errors at the plot level and may be easily corrected by taking a crown mass proxy for the largest trees in a stand into account, thus suggesting that the accuracy of forest carbon estimates can be significantly improved at a minimal cost.
The theory of metabolic ecology predicts specific relationships among tree stem diameter, biomass, height, growth and mortality. As demographic rates are important to estimates of carbon fluxes in ...forests, this theory might offer important insights into the global carbon budget, and deserves careful assessment. We assembled data from 10 old‐growth tropical forests encompassing censuses of 367 ha and > 1.7 million trees to test the theory's predictions. We also developed a set of alternative predictions that retained some assumptions of metabolic ecology while also considering how availability of a key limiting resource, light, changes with tree size. Our results show that there are no universal scaling relationships of growth or mortality with size among trees in tropical forests. Observed patterns were consistent with our alternative model in the one site where we had the data necessary to evaluate it, and were inconsistent with the predictions of metabolic ecology in all forests.
In temperate regions the chemistry of the lower troposphere is known to be significantly affected by biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by plants. The chemistry of the lower ...troposphere over the tropics, however, is poorly understood, in part because of the considerable uncertainties in VOC emissions from tropical ecosystems. Present global VOC models predict that base emissions of isoprene from tropical rainforests are considerably higher than from savannas. These global models of VOC emissions which rely mainly on species inventories are useful, but significant improvement might be made with more ecologically based models of VOC emissions by plants. Ecosystems along a successional transect from woodland savanna to primary rainforest in central Africa were characterized for species composition and vegetation abundance using ground surveys and remotely sensed data. A total of 336 species (mostly trees) at 13 sites were recorded, and 208 of these were measured for VOC emissions at near‐optimal light and temperature conditions using a leaf cuvette and hand‐held photoionization detector (PID). A subset of 59 species was also sampled using conventional VOC emission techniques in order to validate the PID technique. Results of ecological and VOC emission surveys indicate both phylogenetic and successional patterns along the savanna‐rainforest transect. Genera and families of trees which tend to emit isoprene include Lophira, Irvingia, Albizia, Artocarpus, Ficus, Pterocarpus, Caesalpiniaceae, Arecaceae, and Moraceae. Other taxa tend to contain stored VOCs (Annonaceae and Asteraceae). Successional patterns suggest that isoprene emissions are highest in the relatively early successional Isoberlinia forest communities and progressively decrease in the later successional secondary and primary rainforest communities. Stored VOCs appear to increase along the savanna‐rainforest succession, but these data are more tentative. These findings are consistent with successional patterns of isoprene and terpene fluxes in North American forests and highlight the feasibility of constructing better predictive models of VOC emissions.
The conservation of tropical forest carbon stocks offers the opportunity to curb climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and simultaneously conserve biodiversity. ...However, there has been considerable debate about the extent to which carbon stock conservation will provide benefits to biodiversity in part because whether forests that contain high carbon density in their aboveground biomass also contain high animal diversity is unknown. Here, we empirically examined medium to large bodied ground-dwelling mammal and bird (hereafter "wildlife") diversity and carbon stock levels within the tropics using camera trap and vegetation data from a pantropical network of sites. Specifically, we tested whether tropical forests that stored more carbon contained higher wildlife species richness, taxonomic diversity, and trait diversity. We found that carbon stocks were not a significant predictor for any of these three measures of diversity, which suggests that benefits for wildlife diversity will not be maximized unless wildlife diversity is explicitly taken into account; prioritizing carbon stocks alone will not necessarily meet biodiversity conservation goals. We recommend conservation planning that considers both objectives because there is the potential for more wildlife diversity and carbon stock conservation to be achieved for the same total budget if both objectives are pursued in tandem rather than independently. Tropical forests with low elevation variability and low tree density supported significantly higher wildlife diversity. These tropical forest characteristics may provide more affordable proxies of wildlife diversity for future multi-objective conservation planning when fine scale data on wildlife are lacking.
Very high spatial resolution (VHSR) optical satellite imagery has shown good potential to provide non-saturating proxies of tropical forest aboveground biomass (AGB) from the analysis of canopy ...texture, for instance through the Fourier Transform Textural Ordination method. Empirical case studies however showed that the relationship between Fourier texture features and forest AGB varies across forest types and regions of the world, limiting model transferability. A better understanding of the biophysical mechanisms on which canopy texture – forest AGB relation relies is a prerequisite to move toward broad scale applications. Here we simulated VHSR optical canopy scenes in identical sun-sensor geometry for 279 1-ha tropical forest inventory plots distributed across the tropics. Our aim was to assess the respective merits and complementarity of two types of texture analysis techniques (i.e. Fourier and lacunarity) on a set of forests with contrasted structure and geographical origin, and develop a general texture-based approach for tropical forest AGB mapping. Across forests, Fourier texture captured a gradient of stands mean crown size reflecting well the progressive changes in stand structure throughout forest aggradation phase (e.g. Pearson's r=−0.42 with basal area) while lacunarity texture captured a gradient of canopy openness (, i.e. Pearson's r=−0.57 with stand gap fraction). Both types of texture indices were highly complementary for predicting forest AGB at the global level (so-called FL-model). The residual error of the FL-model was structured across sites and could be partially captured with a bioclimatic proxy, further improving the performance of the global model (so-called FLE-model) and reducing site-level biases. The FLE model was tested on a set of real Pleiades images covering a mosaic of high-biomass forests in the Congo basin (mean AGB over 49 field plots: 359±98Mgha−1), leading to a significant relationship (R2=0.47 on validation data) with reasonable error levels (<25% rRMSE). The increasing availability of VHSR optical sensors (such as from constellations of small satellite platforms) raises the possibility of routine repeated imaging of the world's tropical forests and suggests that texture-based analyses could become an essential tool in international efforts to monitor carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradations (REDD+).
•We assessed canopy texture – biomass relations on contrasted tropical forests.•Fourier texture – forest structure relations vary with local forest dynamics.•Lacunarity analysis provides complementary information related to canopy openness.•Combining texture indices and bioclimatic information improve biomass predictions.•A general forest biomass prediction model from VHR images was initiated.
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