Treesearch

Understanding the heterogeneity of biomass accumulation in second-growth tropical forests following land use abandonment is important for informing ecosystem carbon models and forest restoration efforts. There is an urgent need for a broad sample of second-growth forests to enhance our knowledge of carbon accumulation in human-dominated landscapes, especially for older forests. Puerto Rico has predominantly second-growth forests, ranging in age from approximately 25 to more than 80 years. We used an island-wide sample of airborne lidar from the NASA Goddard Lidar, Hyperspectral, and...

Understanding near-surface atmospheric behavior in the tropics is imperative given the role of tropical energy fluxes in Earth’s climate cycles, but this area is complicated by a land–atmosphere interaction that includes rugged topography, seasonal weather drivers, and frequent environmental disturbances. This study examines variation in nearsurface atmospheric behaviors in northeastern Puerto Rico using a synthesis of data from lowland and montane locations under different land covers (forest, urban, and rural) during 2008–21, when a severe drought, large hurricanes (Irma and Maria), and...

Global climate change has led to rising temperatures and to more frequent and intense climatic events, such as storms and droughts. Changes in climate and disturbance regimes can have non-additive effects on plant communities and result in complicated legacies we have yet to understand. This is especially true for tropical forests, which play a significant role in regulating global climate. We used understory vegetation data from the Tropical Responses to Altered Climate Experiment (TRACE) in Puerto Rico to evaluate how plant communities responded to climate warming and disturbance. The...

Hurricanes commonly disturb and damage tropical forests. Hurricane frequency and intensity are predicted to change under the changing climate. The short-term impacts of hurricane disturbances to tropical forests have been widely studied, but the long-term impacts are rarely investigated. Modeling is critical to investigate the potential response of forests to future disturbances, particularly if the nature of the disturbances is changing with climate. Unfortunately, existing models of forest dynamics are not presently able to account for hurricane disturbances. Therefore, we implement the...

Extreme rainfall events in the humid-tropical Luquillo Mountains, Puerto Rico export the bulk of suspended sediment and particulate organic carbon. Using 25 years of river carbon and suspended sediment data, which targeted hurricanes and other large rainstorms, we estimated biogenic particulate organic carbon yields of 65 ± 16 tC km-2yr-1 for the Icacos and 17.7 ±5.1 tC km-2 yr−1 for the Mameyes rivers. These granitic and volcaniclastic catchments function as substantial atmospheric carbon-dioxide sinks, largely through export of river biogenic particulate organic carbon during extreme...

Hurricanes defoliate canopy and break tree branches and stems, generating large amount of plant debris in forest ecosystems. Forest recovery after hurricane disturbances relies heavily on the decomposition of these plant debris. Here we addressed the “tropical hierarchy of factors” hypothesis that substrate quality replaces climate as the predominant control on plant litter decomposition in tropical forests. We compared leaf decomposition between subtropical rain and dry forests on the island of Puerto Rico by reciprocally transplanting green-leaf litter between rain (Eugenia borinquensis...

Humans place strong pressure on land and have modified around 75% of Earth’s terrestrial surface. In this context, ecoregions and biomes, merely defined on the basis of their biophysical features, are incomplete characterizations of the territory. Land system science requires classification schemes that incorporate both social and biophysical dimensions. In this study, we generated spatially explicit social-ecological land system (SELS) typologies for South America with a hybrid methodology that combined datadriven spatial analysis with a knowledge-based evaluation by an interdisciplinary...

After hurricane disturbances in tropical forests, the size structure and species composition are affected by immediate mortality, and subsequent recruitment and individual growth. Often, immediate post-disturbance stand-level data are presented but understanding of the components that affect changes in growth and longer-term responses to forest structure and composition are lacking. To answer questions about how mortality, recruitment, and growth change among successional Plant Functional Types (PFT) through time after a hurricane disturbance, we use long-term census data (1989–2014)...

Sustainable forestry is key to increase the adaptive capacity and resilience of regions exposed to extreme atmospheric events. Understanding social acceptability of forest management practices through a public dialogue that involves a diversity of stakeholders is important to define management policies and strategies. Here, we inquire about social acceptability of a sustainable forestry industry in Puerto Rico by convening a set of local experts from private, non-profit, and public sectors through focus group discussions. We presented three scenarios characterized by different elements of...