Canopy Area of Large Trees Explains Aboveground Biomass Variations across Nine Neotropical Forest Landscapes

Meyer, Victoria; Saatchi, Sassan; Clark, David B.; Keller, Michael; Vincent, Grégoire; Ferraz, António; Espírito-Santo, Fernando Del Bon; d’Oliveira, Marcus Vinício Neves; Kaki, Dahlia A.; Chave, Jérôme

doi:10.5194/bg-2017-547

Cited by 6 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…By using a strict size criterion, we and others using this approach specifically ignored species-level biological traits. The utility of using large trees as a practical method for understanding many aspects of tropical forest ecology has been amply demonstrated [1,2,11,14,31,64].…”

Section: The Concept Of Large Trees: a Practically Useful Classificatmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another interest in large trees is their use as proxies for whole-forest variables such as Estimated-Above-Ground Biomass (EAGB) [2,10,11,12,13]. Several studies have shown that measurements of large tree crown size and height based on remotely-sensed data can be generalized to forest attributes over large spatial domains, cf [12,14,15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The definition of a large tree is inherently comparative (bigger vs. smaller) and subjective (how big?). Different research groups have used different criteria, in part depending on whether the research was based on ground-based or remotely-sensed data (cf �70 cm [35,36,37], �60 cm, [23], � 50 cm [14]). The research reported here was based on ground data, and we used the criterion of a trunk diameter �60 cm in order to compare our data to the largest possible number of tropical studies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Diversity, distribution and dynamics of large trees across an old-growth lowland tropical rain forest landscape

et al. 2019

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Large trees, here defined as �60 cm trunk diameter, are the most massive organisms in tropical rain forest, and are important in forest structure, dynamics and carbon cycling. The status of large trees in tropical forest is unclear, with both increasing and decreasing trends reported. We sampled across an old-growth tropical rain forest landscape at the La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica to study the distribution and performance of large trees and their contribution to forest structure and dynamics. We censused all large trees in 238 0.50 ha plots, and also identified and measured all stems �10 cm diameter in 18 0.50 ha plots annually for 20 years (1997-2017). We assessed abundance, species diversity, and crown conditions of large trees in relation to soil type and topography, measured the contribution of large trees to stand structure, productivity, and dynamics, and analyzed the decadal population trends of large trees. Large trees accounted for 2.5% of stems and 25% of mean basal area and Estimated Above-Ground Biomass, and produced~10% of the estimated wood production. Crown exposure increased with stem diameter but predictability was low. Large tree density was about twice as high on more-fertile flat sites compared to less fertile sites on slopes and plateaus. Density of large trees increased 27% over the study interval, but the increase was restricted to the flat more-fertile sites. Mortality and recruitment differed between large trees and smaller stems, and strongly suggested that large tree density was affected by past climatic disturbances such as large El Niño events. Our results generally do not support the hypothesis of increasing biomass and turnover rates in tropical forest. We suggest that additional landscape-scale studies of large trees are needed to determine the generality of disturbance legacies in tropical forest study sites.

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Section: The Concept Of Large Trees: a Practically Useful Classificatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Diversity, distribution and dynamics of large trees across an old-growth lowland tropical rain forest landscape

et al. 2019

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“…An accurate biomass estimation of large trees is particularly important for both forest biomass [14] and forest biomass estimates [5]. Large trees account for around 75% of total forest AGB variation [14][15][16], and the uncertainty of tree biomass estimates increases with size [5,17,18]. Despite their relevance, large trees make up only 7% of available tropical biomass data (as of 2014; [11]), and the lack of inclusion of large tree biomass data in the development of allometric models is increasingly viewed as problematic [19][20][21][22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tree Biomass Equations from Terrestrial LiDAR: A Case Study in Guyana

Lau

Calders

Bartholomeus

et al. 2019

Forests

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Large uncertainties in tree and forest carbon estimates weaken national efforts to accurately estimate aboveground biomass (AGB) for their national monitoring, measurement, reporting and verification system. Allometric equations to estimate biomass have improved, but remain limited. They rely on destructive sampling; large trees are under-represented in the data used to create them; and they cannot always be applied to different regions. These factors lead to uncertainties and systematic errors in biomass estimations. We developed allometric models to estimate tree AGB in Guyana. These models were based on tree attributes (diameter, height, crown diameter) obtained from terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) point clouds from 72 tropical trees and wood density. We validated our methods and models with data from 26 additional destructively harvested trees. We found that our best TLS-derived allometric models included crown diameter, provided more accurate AGB estimates ( R 2 = 0.92–0.93) than traditional pantropical models ( R 2 = 0.85–0.89), and were especially accurate for large trees (diameter > 70 cm). The assessed pantropical models underestimated AGB by 4 to 13%. Nevertheless, one pantropical model (Chave et al. 2005 without height) consistently performed best among the pantropical models tested ( R 2 = 0.89) and predicted AGB accurately across all size classes—which but for this could not be known without destructive or TLS-derived validation data. Our methods also demonstrate that tree height is difficult to measure in situ, and the inclusion of height in allometric models consistently worsened AGB estimates. We determined that TLS-derived AGB estimates were unbiased. Our approach advances methods to be able to develop, test, and choose allometric models without the need to harvest trees.

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“…They account for ca. 75 % of total forest AGB variations (Slik et al, 2013;Ploton et al, 2016;Meyer et al, 2018) and the error of AGB estimates increases with size Calders et al, 2015b;Gonzalez de Tanago et al, 2017). Despite their relevance, large trees make up only 7 % of available tropical biomass data (as of 2014; Chave et al, 2014), and the lack of inclusion of large tree biomass data in the development of allometric models is increasingly viewed as problematic (Clark & Kellner, 2012;Goodman et al, 2012;Sheil et al, 2017;Disney et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing biomass and architecture of tropical trees with terrestrial laser scanning

Sarmiento¹,

Ivan²

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Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Estimation of above-ground biomass of large tropical trees with Terrestrial LiDAR Chapter 3 Tropical tree biomass equations from terrestrial LiDAR: A case study in Guyana Chapter 4 Quantifying branch architecture of tropical trees using terrestrial LiDAR and 3D modelling Chapter 5 Estimating architecture-based metabolic scaling exponents of tropical trees using terrestrial LiDAR and 3D modelling Chapter 6 Synthesis 115 References 129

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Canopy Area of Large Trees Explains Aboveground Biomass Variations across Nine Neotropical Forest Landscapes

Cited by 6 publications

References 1 publication

Diversity, distribution and dynamics of large trees across an old-growth lowland tropical rain forest landscape

Diversity, distribution and dynamics of large trees across an old-growth lowland tropical rain forest landscape

Tree Biomass Equations from Terrestrial LiDAR: A Case Study in Guyana

Assessing biomass and architecture of tropical trees with terrestrial laser scanning

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