Chave J, Condit R, Muller-Landau HC, Thomas SC, Ashton PS, Bunyavejchewin S, Co LL, Dattaraja HS, Davies SJ, Esufali S, Ewango CEN, Feeley KJ, Foster RB, Gunatilleke N, Gunatilleke S, Hall P, Hart TB, Hernández C, Hubbell SP, Itoh A, Kiratiprayoon S, Lafrankie JV, Loo de Lao S, Makana JR, Noor MNS, Kassim AR, Samper C, Sukumar R, Suresh HS, Tan S, Thompson J, Tongco MDC, Valencia R, Vallejo M, Villa G, Yamakura T, Zimmerman JK, Losos EC. Assessing evidence for a pervasive alteration in tropical tree communities.
PLoS Biol 2008;
6:e45. [PMID:
18318600 PMCID:
PMC2270308 DOI:
10.1371/journal.pbio.0060045]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 94] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/29/2007] [Accepted: 01/14/2008] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
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 CO2 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.
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