Assessing Evidence for a Pervasive Alteration in Tropical Tree Communities
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Author
Chave, Jérôme
Condit, Richard
Muller-Landau, Helene C.
Thomas, Sean C.
Bunyavejchewin, Sarayudh
Co, Leonardo L.
Dattaraja, Handanakere S.
Esufali, Shameema
Ewango, Corneille E. N.
Feeley, Kenneth J.
Foster, Robin B.
Gunatilleke, Nimal
Gunatilleke, Savitri
Hall, Pamela
Hart, Terese B.
Hernández, Consuelo
Hubbell, Stephen P.
Itoh, Akira
Kiratiprayoon, Somboon
LaFrankie, James V.
Loo de Lao, Suzanne
Makana, Jean-Rémy
Noor, Md. Nur Supardi
Kassim, Abdul Rahman
Samper, Cristián
Sukumar, Raman
Suresh, Hebbalalu S.
Tan, Sylvester
Thompson, Jill
Tongco, Ma. Dolores C.
Valencia, Renato
Vallejo, Martha
Villa, Gorky
Yamakura, Takuo
Zimmerman, Jess K.
Losos, Elizabeth C.
Note: Order does not necessarily reflect citation order of authors.
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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060045Metadata
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Chave, Jérôme, Richard Condit, Helene C. Muller-Landau, Sean C. Thomas, Peter S. Ashton, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin, Leonardo L. Co, et al. 2008. Assessing evidence for a pervasive alteration in tropical tree communities. PLoS Biology 6(3): e45.Abstract
In Amazonian tropical forests, recent studies have reported increases in aboveground biomass and in primary productivity, as well as shifts in plant species composition favouring fast-growing species over slow-growing ones. This pervasive alteration of mature tropical forests was attributed to global environmental change, such as an increase in atmospheric \(CO_2\) concentration, nutrient deposition, temperature, drought frequency, and/or irradiance. We used standardized, repeated measurements of over 2 million trees in ten large (16–52 ha each) forest plots on three continents to evaluate the generality of these findings across tropical forests. Aboveground biomass increased at seven of our ten plots, significantly so at four plots, and showed a large decrease at a single plot. Carbon accumulation pooled across sites was significant \((+0.24 MgC ha^{−1} y^{−1}\), 95% confidence intervals \([0.07, 0.39] MgC ha^{−1} y^{−1})\), but lower than reported previously for Amazonia. At three sites for which we had data for multiple census intervals, we found no concerted increase in biomass gain, in conflict with the increased productivity hypothesis. Over all ten plots, the fastest-growing quartile of species gained biomass (+0.33 [0.09, 0.55] % \(y^{−1})\) compared with the tree community as a whole (+0.15 % \(y^{−1})\); however, this significant trend was due to a single plot. Biomass of slow-growing species increased significantly when calculated over all plots (+0.21 [0.02, 0.37] % \(y^{−1})\), and in half of our plots when calculated individually. Our results do not support the hypothesis that fast-growing species are consistently increasing in dominance in tropical tree communities. Instead, they suggest that our plots may be simultaneously recovering from past disturbances and affected by changes in resource availability. More long-term studies are necessary to clarify the contribution of global change to the functioning of tropical forests.Other Sources
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2270308/Terms of Use
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