Drivers of biomass recovery in a secondary forested landscape of West Africa

N’Guessan, Anny Estelle; N’dja, Justin Kassi; Yao, Olivier N.; Amani, Bienvenu H.K.; Gouli, Roseline G.Z.; Piponiot, Camille; Zo‐Bi, Irié Casimir; Hérault, Bruno

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2018.11.021

Cited by 52 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Our methodology can be further refined for Tier 2 and Tier 3 calculations by accounting for deviations resulting from within‐ecozone variation due to site conditions such as climate (e.g. precipitation, temperature), soil fertility, species composition, the presence of remnant trees and previous land use, all of which influence ∆AGB (Chazdon, ; Feldpausch, Rondon, Fernandes, Riha, & Wandelli, ; N'Guessan et al, ; Poorter et al, ; Rozendaal et al, ). Similarly, given the variability in ∆AGB across forest succession, forest types could be further disaggregated into smaller age classes, in particular among older secondary forests.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating aboveground net biomass change for tropical and subtropical forests: Refinement of IPCC default rates using forest plot data

Suárez

Rozendaal

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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As countries advance in greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting for climate change mitigation, consistent estimates of aboveground net biomass change (∆AGB) are needed. Countries with limited forest monitoring capabilities in the tropics and subtropics rely on IPCC 2006 default ∆AGB rates, which are values per ecological zone, per continent. Similarly, research into forest biomass change at a large scale also makes use of these rates. IPCC 2006 default rates come from a handful of studies, provide no uncertainty indications and do not distinguish between older secondary forests and old‐growth forests. As part of the 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, we incorporate ∆AGB data available from 2006 onwards, comprising 176 chronosequences in secondary forests and 536 permanent plots in old‐growth and managed/logged forests located in 42 countries in Africa, North and South America and Asia. We generated ∆AGB rate estimates for younger secondary forests (≤20 years), older secondary forests (>20 years and up to 100 years) and old‐growth forests, and accounted for uncertainties in our estimates. In tropical rainforests, for which data availability was the highest, our ∆AGB rate estimates ranged from 3.4 (Asia) to 7.6 (Africa) Mg ha−1 year−1 in younger secondary forests, from 2.3 (North and South America) to 3.5 (Africa) Mg ha−1 year−1 in older secondary forests, and 0.7 (Asia) to 1.3 (Africa) Mg ha−1 year−1 in old‐growth forests. We provide a rigorous and traceable refinement of the IPCC 2006 default rates in tropical and subtropical ecological zones, and identify which areas require more research on ∆AGB. In this respect, this study should be considered as an important step towards quantifying the role of tropical and subtropical forests as carbon sinks with higher accuracy; our new rates can be used for large‐scale GHG accounting by governmental bodies, nongovernmental organizations and in scientific research.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating aboveground net biomass change for tropical and subtropical forests: Refinement of IPCC default rates using forest plot data

Suárez

Rozendaal

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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“…Secondary forest successional trajectories can be difficult to predict (Norden et al, ), presumably due to land‐use history and legacy effects (Arroyo‐Rodríguez et al, ; N'Guessan et al, ). The long‐term effects of biodiversity on ecosystem recovery and their underlying mechanisms in tropical forests remain under‐documented (van der Sande, Poorter, Balvanera, et al, ; van der Sande, Poorter, Kooistra, et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional diversity improves tropical forest resilience: Insights from a long‐term virtual experiment

et al. 2020

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1. Human activities modify the disturbance regimes of tropical forests. Since tropical forests host high biological diversity, understanding the role of biodiversity in ecosystem recovery pathways and the underlying ecological mechanisms is crucial to predict the fate of tropical ecosystems. Studies relying on regularly censused forest plots, rarely include disturbed forests, are not long enough to assess longterm forest dynamics and often lack repeatability.2. We used an individual-based model of tropical forest growth to assess the effect of species and functional diversity on long-term ecosystem recovery from disturbance. We manipulated the number of species and functional assemblages across a large number of simulations and simulated different levels of disturbance. To investigate the ecological mechanisms that underlie the effect of biodiversity on forest functioning along recovery pathways, we partitioned the net effect of biodiversity on ecosystem properties into complementarity and selection effects over time.3. We found that functional diversity improved tropical forest resilience after a disturbance. The complementarity effect dominated soon after the disturbance but was progressively surpassed by a selection effect as more competitive species dominated the forest community. This pattern increased with the intensity of the disturbance. Synthesis.We found that the mechanisms through which biodiversity influences forest functioning depend on the ecosystem state, shifting from a dominant complementarity effect in recently disturbed systems to a selection effect in systems disturbed a long time ago. Our results thus suggest that the time since the last disturbance is a key to understanding biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships in tropical forests and can help reconcile previous contrasting results obtained with snapshots of ecosystem state in empirical studies. 832 | biodiversity-ecosystem functioning, complementarity effect, disturbance, individual-based model, recovery, selection effect, simulation | 833 Journal of Ecology SCHMITT eT al.

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“…Previous studies have used long-term forest plot surveys along chronosequences to quantify forest carbon dynamics in secondary tropical forests (Chazdon et al, 2007;N'Guessan et al, 2019;Norden et al, 2011Norden et al, , 2015Poorter et al, 2016a;Rozendaal and Chazdon, 2015). Although long-term forest plots are essential for understanding the dynamics of tropical forests (Losos and Leigh, 2004), they are scarce, inherently labor-intensive, expensive and time-consuming to maintain, and not evenly distributed in the tropics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forest aboveground biomass stock and resilience in a tropical landscape of Thailand

Jha¹,

Tripathi²,

Chanthorn³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Abstract. Half of Asian tropical forests were disturbed in the last century resulting in the dominance of secondary forests in Southeast Asia. However, the rate at which biomass accumulates during the recovery process in these forests is poorly understood. We studied a forest landscape located in Khao Yai National Park (Thailand) that experienced strong disturbances in the last century due to clearance by swidden farmers. Combining recent field and airborne laser scanning (ALS) data, we first built a high-resolution aboveground biomass (AGB) map over 60&#8201;km2 of the forest landscape. We then used the random forest algorithm and Landsat time-series (LTS) data to classify landscape patches as non-forested versus forested on an almost annual basis from 1972 to 2017. The resulting chronosequence was then used in combination with the AGB map to estimate forest carbon recovery rates in secondary forest patches during the first 42 years of succession. The ALS-AGB model predicted AGB with an error of 14&#8201;% at 0.5-ha resolution (RMSE&#8201;=&#8201;45&#8201;Mg&#8201;ha&#8722;1) using the mean top-of-canopy height as a single predictor. The mean AGB over the landscape was of 291&#8201;Mg&#8201;ha&#8722;1 showing a high level of carbon storage despite past disturbance history. We found that AGB recovery varies non-linearly in the first 42 years of the succession, with an increasing rate of accumulation through time. We predicted a mean AGB recovery rate of 6.9&#8201;Mg&#8201;ha&#8722;1 yr&#8722;1, with a mean AGB gain of 143 and 273&#8201;Mg&#8201;ha&#8722;1 after 20 and 40 years, respectively. These estimates are within the range of those reported for the well-studied Latin American secondary forests under similar climatic conditions. This study illustrates the potential of ALS data not only for scaling up field AGB measurements but also for predicting AGB recovery dynamics when combined with long-term satellite data. It also illustrates that tropical forest landscapes that were disturbed in the past are of utmost importance for the regional carbon budget and thus for implementing international programs such as REDD+.

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Drivers of biomass recovery in a secondary forested landscape of West Africa

Cited by 52 publications

References 53 publications

Estimating aboveground net biomass change for tropical and subtropical forests: Refinement of IPCC default rates using forest plot data

Estimating aboveground net biomass change for tropical and subtropical forests: Refinement of IPCC default rates using forest plot data

Functional diversity improves tropical forest resilience: Insights from a long‐term virtual experiment

Forest aboveground biomass stock and resilience in a tropical landscape of Thailand

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