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Reduction in faunal diversity is suggested to reduce litter decomposition, whereas increases in ultraviolet (UV) radiation may directly enhance or indirectly retard litter decomposition. Here we examined the effect of soil arthropods and UV radiation on litter decomposition in burned and unburned plots during a 469-day field experiment in a subtropical pastureland of Puerto Rico. Prescribed burn reduced soil arthropod diversity and increased UV radiation during the initial period of 240 days following the burn, and consequently reduced plant litter decomposition. The density of predators...

This paper describes the challenges and potential opportunities for using renewable electricity technologies to increase the resilience of Puerto Rico’s food supply system (including commodity production, processing, storage, and distribution) to prolonged (2 days to 6 months) utility power outages. This need is essential because the island’s grid electricity has proven to be very susceptible to long-run outages related to severe weather and geologic events (e.g., Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 and earthquakes in 2019 and 2020) as well as outages related to aging and poorly maintained...

Este informe describe los desafíos y posibilidad de oportunidades para el uso de tecnologías de electricidad renovable para aumentar la resiliencia del sistema de suministros de alimento de Puerto Rico (incluida la producción, el procesamiento, el almacenamiento y la distribución de productos básicos) ante interrupciones prolongadas (de 2 días a 6 meses) de energía eléctrica. Esta necesidad es esencial porque la red eléctrica de la isla ha demostrado ser muy susceptible a interrupciones a largo plazo relacionadas con eventos climáticos y geológicos severos (por ejemplo, los huracanes Irma...

In this study, water level models are constructed to characterize mangrove flooding across urban gradients in Puerto Rico. The most urban sites exhibited 95% longer hydroperiods, 23% lower flood frequencies, and 110% lower depths than the least urban sites. Rainfall importance was explained more by geomorphology and tidal connectivity than by urbanization, but there was evidence for changes in tidal amplitudes along the urban gradient. Relationships between surface water chemical metrics and land cover contradicted previous studies by suggesting lower nutrients and biochemical oxygen...

This study characterizes the structure and composition of mangrove forests across urban gradients in Puerto Rico. It then uses a suite of hydrologic, water chemistry, and land cover variables to test for the relative importance of urban intensity alongside flooding and water chemistry in explaining observed variability in forest structure and composition. Three separate statistical tests suggest a significant but limited influence of urbanness on forest composition and structure. In the most urban sites, the diameters of the largest trees were 27% larger, but all structural measurements...

There is increasing enthusiasm around the concept of soil health, and as a result, new public and private initiatives are being developed to increase soil health-related practices on working lands in the United States. In addition, billions of U.S. public dollars are dedicated annually toward soil conservation programs, and yet, it is not well quantified how investment in conservation programs improve soil health and, more broadly, environmental health. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program(EQIP) is one of the major U.S. public conservation programs administered on privately managed...

1.Topography affects abiotic conditions which can influence the structure, function and dynamics of ecological communities. An increasing number of studies have demonstrated biological consequences of fine‐scale topographic heterogeneity but we have a limited understanding of how these effects depend on the climate context. 2. We merged high‐resolution (1 m2 ) data on topography and canopy height derived from airborne lidar with ground‐based data from 15 forest plots in Puerto Rico distributed along a precipitation gradient spanning c. 800–3,500 mm/year. Ground‐based data included species...

Este experimento, realizado en el Área de Investigación El Verde, en el Bosque Experimental de Luquillo, Puerto Rico; se incluye dentro del proyecto llamado StreamFRE. Este proyecto perteneciente al programa Luquillo-Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) pretende dar respuesta a los cambios en los ecosistemas acuáticos y riparios de bosques tropicales ante el cambio climático, simulando efectos de sequía con experimentos de reducción de flujo en arroyos/quebradas. El estudio de la reducción de flujo será puesto en práctica con la colocación de una presa hidráulica en la quebrada experimental...

Despite the importance of tropical forests to global carbon balance, our understanding of how tropical plant physiology will respond to climate warming is limited. In addition, the contribution of tropical forest understories to global carbon cycling is predicted to increase with rising temperatures, however, in situ warming studies of tropical forest plants to date focus only on upper canopies. We present results of an in situ field-scale +4°C understory infrared warming experiment in Puerto Rico (Tropical Responses to Altered Climate Experiment; TRACE). We investigated gas exchange...