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The stocks and dynamics of coarse woody debris (CWD) are significant components of the carbon cycle within tropical forests. However, to date, there have been no reports of CWD stocks and fluxes from the approximately 1.3 million km(2) of lowland western Amazonian forests. Here, we present estimates of CWD stocks and annual CWD inputs from forests in southern Peru. Total stocks were low compared to other tropical forest sites, whether estimated by line-intercept sampling (24.4 +/- 5.3 Mg ha(-1)) or by complete inventories within 11 permanent plots (17.7 +/- 2.4 Mg ha(-1)). However, annual inputs, estimated from long-term data on tree mortality rates in the same plots, were similar to other studies (3.8 +/- 0.2 or 2.9 +/- 0.2 Mg ha(-1) year(-1), depending on the equation used to estimate biomass). Assuming the CWD pool is at steady state, the turnover time of coarse woody debris is low (4.7 +/- 2.6 or 6.1 +/- 2.6 years). These results indicate that these sites have not experienced a recent, large-scale disturbance event and emphasise the distinctive, rapid nature of carbon cycling in these western Amazonian forests.

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