Treesearch

The article presents comparative data for aboveground biomass, wood volume, nutirent stocks (N, P, K) and leaf litter in different types of forests in Puerto Rico. The aim of the study is to assess how novel forests of Castilla elastica, Panama Rubber Tree, and Spathodea campanulata, African Tulip Tree, compare with tree plantations and native historical forests (both secondary and mature). It found that novel forests of these two species can accumulate large quantities of biomass and nutrients above ground, that they do so at a rapid rate and that they exhibit high rates of leaf fall....

This essay describes our effort to develop a practical approach to the integration of the social and ecological sciences in the context of a Latin-American city such as San Juan, Puerto Rico. We describe our adaptive social-ecological approach in the historical context of the developing paradigms of the Anthropocene, new integrative social and ecological sciences, and the social and ecological conditions in San Juan. The problems faced by tropical cities are more complex than implied by isolated studies of their sociology and ecology, a situation that demands a higher level of integration...

Tropical secondary forests provide many products, environmental services, and recreation. These forests have a set of biological features, such as their high productivity and a uniform composition of dominant tree species. To understand the composition and structure of a secondary forest in the northern karst zone, we selected the Santa Ana Environmental Center (CASA by its Spanish acronym), Bayamón, Puerto Rico, in the San Juan metropolitan area. It lies within the subtropical moist forest zone according to the Holdridge classification system (Ewel and Whitmore 1973). The objective of...

[1] Soil moisture is a key driver of biogeochemical processes in terrestrial ecosystems, strongly affecting carbon (C) and nutrient availability as well as trace gas production and consumption in soils. Models predict increasing drought frequency in tropical forest ecosystems, which could feed back on future climate change directly via effects on trace gasdynamics and indirectly through changes in nutrient availability. We used throughfall exclusion shelters to determine effects of short-term (3 month) drought on trace gas fluxes and nutrient availability in humid tropical forests in...

This data set reports measurements of trace gas fluxes of methane (CH4), nitric oxide (N2O), nitrous oxide (NO), carbon dioxide (CO2) from soils at a study site in the Tapajos National Forest (TNF), near the km 83 on the Santarem-Cuiaba Highway south of Santarem, Para, Brazil. Data for root mass and carbon content, soil nitrogen (N), nitrification, and moisture content are also provided. There are five comma-delimited data files with this data set. The research was conducted to test the effects of root mortality on the soil-atmosphere trace-gas fluxes over the course of one year. Root...

Tropical forest structural variation across heterogeneous landscapes may control above-ground carbon dynamics. We tested the hypothesis that canopy structure (leaf area and light availability) – remotely estimated from LiDAR – control variation in above-ground coarse wood production (biomass growth). Using a statistical model, these factors predicted biomass growth across tree size classes in forest near Manaus, Brazil. The same statistical model, with no parameterisation change but driven by different observed canopy structure, predicted the higher productivity of a site 500 km east. Gap...

The IXth Neotropical Ornithological Congress in Peru (Cusco, 8 – 14 November 2011). -The IXth Neotropical Congress of Ornithology (IX NOC), co-sponsored by the Neotropical Ornithological Society (NOS) and the Union of Peruvian Ornithologists (UNOP), took place in Cusco, Peru, from the 8 – 14 November 2011. The IX NOC was dedicated to the memory of Maria Koepcke for her dedication and contributions to Neotropical ornithology and especially to Peruvian ornithology (Servat et al., this volume). The meeting with more than 800 participants from 25 countries adhered to high quality standards of...