Multi-scale comparisons of tree composition in Amazonian terra firme forests

Coronado, Eurídice N. Honorio; Baker, Timothy R.; Phillips, Oliver L.; Pitman, Nigel C. A.; Pennington, R. Toby; Martínez, Rodolfo Vásquez; Monteagudo, Abel; Mogollón, Hugo F.; Cardozo, Nallaret Dávila; Ríos, Marcos; García‐Villacorta, Roosevelt; Valderrama, Elvis; Ahuite, Manuel; Huamantupa, Isaú; Neill, David; Laurance, William F.; Nascimento, Henrique E. M.; Almeida, Samuel; Killeen, Timothy J.; Arroyo, L.; Núñez, Percy; Alvarado, Luis Freitas

doi:10.5194/bg-6-2719-2009

Cited by 51 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…This result is consistent with Tuomisto et al (), who found that environmental dissimilarity explained more variation in compositional dissimilarity than geographic distance in lowland western Amazonia. In contrast, many other studies found a large portion of variation in the community matrix or community dissimilarity matrix that is explained by spatial variation but not environmental variation (Condit et al , Vormisto et al , Normand et al , Bohlman et al , Honorio Coronado et al ). However, caution should be used when comparing the results of distance‐based and raw‐data approaches, as these differ in their treatment of the data and underlying assumptions (Legendre et al ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Environmental drivers of tree community turnover in western Amazonian forests

et al. 2016

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A more comprehensive understanding of the factors governing tropical tree community turnover at different spatial scales is needed to support land‐management and biodiversity conservation. We used new forest inventory data from 263 permanent plots in the Carnegie Biodiversity‐Biomass Forest Plot Network spanning the eastern Andes to the western Amazonian lowlands of Peru to examine environmental factors driving genus‐level canopy tree compositional variation at regional and landscape scales. Across the full plot network, constrained ordination analysis indicated that all environmental variables together explained 23.8% of the variation in community composition, while soil, topographic, and climatic variables each explained 15.2, 10.9, and 17.0%, respectively. A satellite‐derived metric of cloudiness was the single strongest predictor of community turnover, and constrained ordination revealed a primary gradient of environmentally‐driven community turnover spanning from cloudy, high elevation sites to warm, wet, lowland sites. For three focal landscapes within the region, local environmental variation explained 13.4–30.8% of compositional variation. Community turnover at the landscape scale was strongly driven by topo‐edaphic factors in the two lowland landscapes examined and strongly driven by potential insolation and topography in the montane landscape. At the regional scale, we found that the portion of compositional variation that was uniquely explained by spatial variation was relatively small (2.7%), and was effectively zero within the three focal landscapes. Overall, our results show strong canopy tree compositional turnover in response to environmental gradients at both regional and landscape scales, though the most important environmental drivers differed between scales and among landscapes. Our results also highlight the usefulness of key satellite‐derived environmental covariates that should be considered when conducting biodiversity analyses in tropical forests.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Environmental drivers of tree community turnover in western Amazonian forests

et al. 2016

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“…The most abundant palms in our study, Euterpe precatoria, Iriartea deltoidea, and S. exorrhiza are also abundant and widely distributed throughout Amazonia (Pitman et al 2001, Vormisto et al 2004, Kristiansen et al 2009) to Central America (Pyke et al 2001, Sesnie et al 2009). As a result, far-away forests can be, to a certain extent, floristically similar (Honorio-Coronado et al 2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patterns and Determinants of Floristic Variation across Lowland Forests of Bolivia

et al. 2010

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Floristic variation is high in the Neotropics, but little is known about the factors shaping this variation at the mesoscale. We examined floristic composition and its relationship with environmental factors across 220 1-ha permanent plots in tropical lowland Bolivia. For each plot, abundance of 100 species (93 tree and 7 palm species Z10 cm diam) was obtained. Climatic data, related to rainfall seasonality and temperature, were interpolated from all available weather stations in the region, and soil properties, related to texture and fertility, were obtained for each plot. Floristic variation was strongly associated with differences in water availability and temperature, and therefore the climatic gradient shaped floristic variation more strongly than the edaphic gradient. Detrended correspondence analysis ordination divided lowland Bolivia primarily into two major groups (Southern Chiquitano region vs. the Amazon region) and a multiple response permutation procedure distinguished five floristic regions. Overall, the tested environmental variables differed significantly among the five regions. Using indicator species analysis, we distinguished 82 strong indicator species, which had significant environmental preferences for one floristic region. These species can be used as indicators of environmental conditions or to determine which floristic region a certain forest belongs. Given the predicted decreases in rainfall and increases in temperature for tropical lowland forests, our gradient approach suggests that species composition may shift drastically with climate change.

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“…The second landscape, Jenaro Herrera, is a centre of research of the Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonía Peruana. Jenaro Herrera is made up primarily of terra firme forest, although there are some small patches of white‐sand forest, seasonally flooded forest, and palm swamp forest (Honorio Coronado et al, ; Honorio Coronado, Pennington, Freitas, Nebel, & Baker, ). Finally, the Quebrada Braga landscape is located south of Jenaro Herrera, and is surrounded by the Ucayali river on three sides, these low‐lying forests are inundated seasonally with nutrient‐rich white water (Nebel et al, ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These white-sand forests have exceptionally nutrient-poor sandy soils of cratonic origin, and harbour numerous endemic tree species (Fine et al, 2010). some small patches of white-sand forest, seasonally flooded forest, and palm swamp forest (Honorio Coronado et al, 2009;Honorio Coronado, Pennington, Freitas, Nebel, & Baker, 2008). Finally, the Quebrada Braga landscape is located south of Jenaro Herrera, and is surrounded by the Ucayali river on three sides, these low-lying forests are inundated seasonally with nutrient-rich white water ).…”

Section: Study Landscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imaging spectroscopy predicts variable distance decay across contrasting Amazonian tree communities

et al. 2018

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The forests of Amazonia are among the most biodiverse on Earth, yet accurately quantifying how species composition varies through space (i.e., beta‐diversity) remains a significant challenge. Here, we use high‐fidelity airborne imaging spectroscopy from the Carnegie Airborne Observatory to quantify a key component of beta‐diversity, the distance decay in species similarity through space, across three landscapes in Northern Peru. We then compared our derived distance decay relationships to theoretical expectations obtained from a Poisson Cluster Process, known to match well with empirical distance decay relationships at local scales. We used an unsupervised machine learning approach to estimate spatial turnover in species composition from the imaging spectroscopy data. We first validated this approach across two landscapes using an independent dataset of forest composition in 49 forest census plots (0.1–1.5 ha). We then applied our approach to three landscapes, which together represented terra firme clay forest, seasonally flooded forest and white‐sand forest. We finally used our approach to quantify landscape‐scale distance decay relationships and compared these with theoretical distance decay relationships derived from a Poisson Cluster Process. We found a significant correlation of similarity metrics between spectral data and forest plot data, suggesting that beta‐diversity within and among forest types can be accurately estimated from airborne spectroscopic data using our unsupervised approach. We also found that estimated distance decay in species similarity varied among forest types, with seasonally flooded forests showing stronger distance decay than white‐sand and terra firme forests. Finally, we demonstrated that distance decay relationships derived from the theoretical Poisson Cluster Process compare poorly with our empirical relationships. Synthesis. Our results demonstrate the efficacy of using high‐fidelity imaging spectroscopy to estimate beta‐diversity and continuous distance decay in lowland tropical forests. Furthermore, our findings suggest that distance decay relationships vary substantially among forest types, which has important implications for conserving these valuable ecosystems. Finally, we demonstrate that a theoretical Poisson Cluster Process poorly predicts distance decay in species similarity as conspecific aggregation occurs across a range of nested scales within larger landscapes.

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Multi-scale comparisons of tree composition in Amazonian terra firme forests

Cited by 51 publications

References 42 publications

Environmental drivers of tree community turnover in western Amazonian forests

Environmental drivers of tree community turnover in western Amazonian forests

Patterns and Determinants of Floristic Variation across Lowland Forests of Bolivia

Imaging spectroscopy predicts variable distance decay across contrasting Amazonian tree communities

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