Hurricanes Substantially Reduce the Nutrients in Tropical Forested Watersheds in Puerto Rico

Sun, Jiamei; Wei, Xinyuan; Zhou, Yu; Chan, Catherine; Diao, Jiaojiao

doi:10.3390/f13010071

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…In forests recovering from canopy disturbance, as in this study, the timing and magnitude of nutrient fluxes interacting with environmental factors influence nutrient fate in terms of the proportion incorporated by vegetation versus lost from the ecosystem via fluxes to the atmosphere or leached and exported by streams (Lodge et al, 1994;Lodge & McDowell, 1991;McDowell et al, 1996;McDowell & Liptzin, 2014;Shiels et al, 2015;Steudler et al, 1991;Zimmerman et al, 1995). Sun et al (2022) showed N and P export from the Rio Grande watershed, which includes our site, increased about 300% during Hurricane Maria, and took nearly a year to return to background levels. In this study, nutrient fluxes from green litter differed significantly between canopy treatments and litterbag mesh sizes, and these differences corresponded to changes in arthropod community composition.…”

Section: Nutrient Fluxesmentioning

confidence: 70%

Canopy opening increases leaf‐shredding arthropods and nutrient mineralization but not mass loss in wet tropical forest

et al. 2022

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Hurricanes alter forest habitat by opening the canopy and depositing fresh wood and leaves. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the effects of hurricane and drought‐driven changes to forests on green litter decomposition, invertebrate communities, and nutrient mineralization over a short period (6 months) after disturbance. We used three complete replicated blocks with two canopy treatments: control and trim + detritus. Green leaves were enclosed in litterbags of three different mesh sizes to determine the effect of soil fauna of varying body sizes. Litterbags were retrieved from the field after 21, 35, 84, and 168 days and transported to the laboratory in individually sealed plastic bags. We extracted and identified invertebrates, measured leached and mineralized litter nutrients using ion resin membranes placed for 1 week under the leaves inside the litterbags, and determined litter mass loss. Additional resin membranes were placed in the lowest litter layer above the mineral soil. The number of arthropod taxonomic groups and nutrient mineralization differed significantly between control and trim + detritus. Regardless of mesh size, bags in control plots had consistently higher invertebrate richness than in trim + detritus plots. Nitrogen mineralization and phosphorous mineralization were significantly higher in trim + detritus in large mesh size, and decomposer arthropod abundance was highest in large‐sized mesh bags. These data suggest that within functional categories, variations in feeding behavior among arthropod orders may affect the release of nutrients from organic matter. Percent mass loss did not differ between canopy treatments or litterbag mesh sizes, but instead decreased during drought. Invertebrate composition, but not abundance, differed significantly between canopy treatments with greater dominance by shredders (Lepidoptera and Diptera larvae) in trim + detritus, which corresponded to higher rates of nutrient mineralization from green leaves. These results suggest that regional drought dominated the mesoclimate surpassing any microclimate variation in response to canopy treatments. Since mass loss did not differ between canopy treatments or litterbag mesh sizes, our results suggest that differences in short‐term nutrient fluxes from green litter are mostly related to changes in the litter invertebrate food web rather than rates of decomposition.

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Section: Nutrient Fluxesmentioning

confidence: 70%

Canopy opening increases leaf‐shredding arthropods and nutrient mineralization but not mass loss in wet tropical forest

et al. 2022

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“…With global warming, hurricanes and other extreme precipitation events are projected to increase in the future [30,31]. The surges of heavy precipitations associated with these events immediately increase surface runoff.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diminishing marginal effect in estimating the dissolved organic carbon export from a watershed

Wei

Hayes²,

Ku³

et al. 2023

Environ. Res. Commun.

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Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) can be initially moved from soils to inland waters with surface runoff, and then mineralized, buried, or eventually delivered to the coastal ocean. This land-to-ocean phase of the DOC flux must be accounted for to comprehensively understand the global carbon cycle. To estimate the terrestrial-aquatic DOC leaching, calculating the product of the riverine DOC concentration and the corresponding river discharge measured at the watershed outlet is a common method. However, it is challenging to frequently and exactly record riverine DOC concentrations, thus the relationship between DOC concentrations and discharges (C-Q relationship) are established and used to interpolate the time-series of DOC concentrations. We found that the widely used time-dependent and time-independent C-Q regression models are weak in representing their altered relationship when the discharge is extremely high, which was named as diminishing marginal effect. In this study, we evaluated the performance of two C-Q regression models and discussed possible reasons for the diminishing marginal effect. We suggest that repeated and long-term measurements of the DOC concentration are required to adequately analyze their relationships, especially during the early spring and seasons with heavy precipitations.

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“…Storms and hurricanes can directly destroy trees and result in less timber production (Sun, 2016). In addition, they cause a lower rate of tree growth by reducing the available soil nutrients and changing the soil texture (Sun et al, 2022); therefore, the reduction of timber production continues for several years.…”

Section: Environmental Changementioning

confidence: 99%

The potential for storing carbon by harvested wood products

Zhao

Wei

2022

Front. For. Glob. Change

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Forest ecosystems are a critical component of the global carbon cycle, which stores carbon in both vegetation biomass and soil organic matter. Timber harvesting can laterally move the carbon stored in forest sectors to harvested wood products (HWPs) and thus create an HWPs carbon pool. The carbon stored in HWPs is allocated to end-use wood products (e.g., paper, furniture), landfills (e.g., waste wood materials), and charcoal (e.g., non-energy use biochar). Environmental change is predicted to have far-reaching effects on the carbon stored in HWPs by altering the timber supply. In addition, technological advancement in the wood industry accelerates the carbon inflow rate by promoting processing efficiency and reduces the outflow rate by creating innovative wood products with a longer service life. Socioeconomic factors such as population and household income also contribute to the carbon stock changes in wood products by expanding or reducing the demand. Given numerous factors that are correlated with the size of HWPs carbon pool, an advanced and comprehensive understanding of these factors on modifying the HWPs carbon storage is essential to modeling and predicting the carbon stored in HWPs, atmospheric CO2 concentration, and global warming; therefore, we reviewed, summarized, and discussed the function of these factors in regulating the carbon stored in HWPs.

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Hurricanes Substantially Reduce the Nutrients in Tropical Forested Watersheds in Puerto Rico

Cited by 7 publications

References 44 publications

Canopy opening increases leaf‐shredding arthropods and nutrient mineralization but not mass loss in wet tropical forest

Canopy opening increases leaf‐shredding arthropods and nutrient mineralization but not mass loss in wet tropical forest

Diminishing marginal effect in estimating the dissolved organic carbon export from a watershed

The potential for storing carbon by harvested wood products

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