Quantifying Tropical Forest Disturbances Using Canopy Structural Traits Derived from Terrestrial Laser Scanning

Structural Changes Caused by Selective Logging Undermine the Thermal Buffering Capacity of Tropical Forests

“…In particular, the canopy ratio (CR) and the S.1 for a sensitivity analysis and S2 for the regression coefficient. material allocated in the highest layers between 30 m and 35 m were successful in explaining a large part of the maximum offset variability, and these structural characteristics were strongly associated with forest disturbances (Santos et al, 2022;Maeda et al, 2022). In dense unlogged tropical forests, air temperature spikes can occur near the ground, but are more often experienced within the top canopy, where most of the incoming energy is absorbed (Didham and Ewers, 2014).…”

“…Highly correlated traits were not included in the same model to avoid inflation of model explanatory power due to multicollinearity. The ecological relevance of each trait was also considered to be included in the models (Santos et al, 2022). We assumed that canopy structure remained unaffected during the year 2019, as the plant area index during non-El Niño years can be similar in these forest plots throughout the year (Nunes et al, 2021), thereby having potentially small influences on the structural traits of our analysis.…”

“…Selective logging is characterized by the harvest of trees of economic interest, and is responsible for 51 % of the forest disturbances in Asia and Latin America (Hosonuma et al, 2012), accounting for approximately 12 % of the total CO 2 emissions from forest disturbances in tropical countries (Pearson et al, 2017). The harvesting process also alters the structure and functioning of the forest by reducing tree density, modifying tree species composition, and changing the local climate (Blonder et al, 2018;Milodowski et al, 2021;Pfeifer et al, 2015;Santos et al, 2022). Logging of tall trees reduces the amount of plant material in the upper canopy (Hardwick et al, 2015;Santos et al, 2022) and creates forest gaps (Kumar and Shahabuddin, 2005), which increase light penetration (Fauset et al, 2017) and turbulent air mixing leading to a reduction of evapotranspiration (Good et al, 2015).…”

“…The harvesting process also alters the structure and functioning of the forest by reducing tree density, modifying tree species composition, and changing the local climate (Blonder et al, 2018;Milodowski et al, 2021;Pfeifer et al, 2015;Santos et al, 2022). Logging of tall trees reduces the amount of plant material in the upper canopy (Hardwick et al, 2015;Santos et al, 2022) and creates forest gaps (Kumar and Shahabuddin, 2005), which increase light penetration (Fauset et al, 2017) and turbulent air mixing leading to a reduction of evapotranspiration (Good et al, 2015).…”

“…Recently, increased access to Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technologies has enabled a more precise monitoring of forest structural attributes and a more robust understanding of the relationships between biophysical parameters and microclimate. In particular, Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) systems can quantify the three-dimensional distribution of plant material in high detail, even in dense tropical forests where aerial and spaceborne platforms have difficulties in characterizing the understory vegetation (Calders et al, 2020;Maeda et al, 2022;Santos et al, 2022). A potentially effective method for analysing the intricate data obtained from TLS systems involves calculating canopy structural metrics, commonly known as canopy structural traits (Schneider et al, 2019).…”