Ecosystem Carbon Storage Across the Grassland–Forest Transition in the High Andes of Manu National Park, Peru

Gibbon, Adam; Silman, Miles R.; Malhi, Yadvinder; Fisher, Joshua B.; Meir, Patrick; Zimmermann, Michael; Dargie, Greta C.; Farfan, William; Garcia, Katrina C.

doi:10.1007/s10021-010-9376-8

Cited by 96 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 53 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…A third shrub habitat type was present in areas where the ecotone between the cloud forest and grassland was wider. For a full description of vegetation types and topography across the site, see Gibbon et al (2010).…”

Section: Neotropical Bird Community Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Unraveling the Interplay of Community Assembly Processes Acting on Multiple Niche Axes across Spatial Scales

Trisos

Petchey

Tobias

2014

The American Naturalist

121

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Online enhancements: appendixes, zip file. Dryad data: http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k9m20.abstract: How the relative importance of community assembly processes varies with spatial scale is the focus of intensive debate, in part because inferring the scales at which specific niche-based processes act is difficult. One obstacle is that standard phylogenetic and functional diversity metrics may integrate the signals of multiple processes when combining separate niche axes into one variable (multiple-niche-axis metrics), potentially obscuring overlapping niche-based processes. We use simulations to evaluate the power of these metrics to detect competition and habitat filtering when these processes operate across multiple niche axes and vary in their relative importance. We then test for both processes at a range of spatial scales in a Neotropical bird assemblage. Simulations revealed that multiple-niche-axis metrics had low power to detect competition and habitat filtering when a mix of both processes acts across niche axes, whereas metrics focused on singleniche axes were better able to deal with this complexity. We found the same contrast in bird communities, where both competition and habitat filtering were detected at the scale of individual territories, but only by single-niche-axis metrics focused on specific niche axes (e.g., foraging traits). Our results suggest that multiple-niche-axis metrics may produce misleading evidence that niche-based processes are partitioned, particularly across scales, and highlight the importance of analyzing functional diversity patterns on individual niche axes when testing assembly models.

show abstract

Section: Neotropical Bird Community Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Unraveling the Interplay of Community Assembly Processes Acting on Multiple Niche Axes across Spatial Scales

Trisos

Petchey

Tobias

2014

The American Naturalist

121

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…At each point we established a smaller 15 m x 5 m plot, within which we estimated the biomass of all standing or fallen dead trees (snags) >5 cm dbh (Gilroy, Woodcock et al 2014). For snags >10 m high we used allometric equations to estimate biomass, applying a deadwood density of 0.31 g cm -3 taken from the literature (Gibbon, Silman et al 2010). For snags <10 m high, we assumed the tree was a cylinder and estimated biomass by multiplying volume with wood density.…”

Section: Dead Vegetationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All vines with a dbh of >2 cm that were <1 m from the long edges of the plot were also measured and vine biomass was estimated using an equation developed in Colombian montane forest (Sierra, del Valle et al 2007). We summed the biomass pools for each plot before multiplying by 0.5 to give an estimate of the total live non-soil carbon stock (Gibbon, Silman et al 2010). Ntotal = 74 plots.…”

Section: Live Non-soil Carbon Stocksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermally buffered microhabitats recovery in tropical secondary forests following land abandonment

Pliego

Scheffers

Basham

et al. 2016

Biological Conservation

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Given the dramatic loss of tropical forests and accelerating climate change, secondary forest regeneration is increasingly recognised as being an important method for reversing losses in biodiversity and carbon stocks. The recolonisation of biodiversity within secondary forests depends upon the recovery of forest structure, including the range of microhabitats used by diverse communities. Here, we investigate the return of critical microhabitats along a successional gradient of secondary forest in the Tropical Andes of Colombia. We measured the abundance of live (bromeliads, tree ferns and moss) and dead (deadwood and leaf litter) microhabitats across three landscapes, each encompassing primary, and young and old secondary forests. Considering the increasing rate of climate warming in the region, we also explored whether these microhabitats provide thermally buffered microclimates. We found that secondary forests have different composition and lower complexity of microhabitats than primary forests, but that the abundance of bromeliads and deadwood recover towards primary levels. Each microhabitat reduces exposure to extreme temperatures, serving as thermal buffers by reducing maximum and increasing minimum temperatures among all forest types. These benefits exist despite ambient temperatures in secondary forests surpassing those of primary forests by 1-2⁰C on average. The protection of secondary forest and promotion of further forest regrowth in the Tropical Andes should represent an urgent investment for conservation, and the value of these secondary forests for offering critical microhabitats and buffered microclimates under climate change should not be overlooked.

show abstract

“…As grazing is known for reducing aboveground biomass (Johnson and Matchett, 2001;Gibbon et al, 2010), a lower incorporation of detritus into the soil is not surprising and has been observed in other grazing studies (Figueiredo et al, 2010;Cao et al, 2013). While there was a significant decrease in the free LF, there was no significant change to the total SOC.…”

Section: Belowground C Stocksmentioning

confidence: 65%

The effects of burning and grazing on soil carbon dynamics in managed Peruvian tropical montane grasslands

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Montane tropical soils are a large carbon (C) reservoir, acting as both a source and a sink of CO 2 . Enhanced CO 2 emissions originate, in large part, from the decomposition and losses of soil organic matter (SOM) following anthropogenic disturbances. Therefore, quantitative knowledge of the stabilization and decomposition of SOM is necessary in order to understand, assess and predict the impact of land management in the tropics. In particular, labile SOM is an early and sensitive indicator of how SOM responds to changes in land use and management practices, which could have major implications for long-term carbon storage and rising atmospheric CO 2 concentrations. The aim of this study was to investigate the impacts of grazing and fire history on soil C dynamics in the Peruvian montane grasslands, an understudied ecosystem, which covers approximately a quarter of the land area in Peru. A density fractionation method was used to quantify the labile and stable organic matter pools, along with soil CO 2 flux and decomposition measurements. Grazing and burning together significantly increased soil CO 2 fluxes and decomposition rates and reduced temperature as a driver. Although there was no significant effect of land use on total soil C stocks, the combination of burning and grazing decreased the proportion of C in the free light fraction (LF), especially at the lower depths (10-20 and 20-30 cm). In the control soils, 20 % of the material recovered was in the free LF, which contained 30 % of the soil C content. In comparison, the burnt-grazed soil had the smallest recovery of the free LF (10 %) and a significantly lower C content (14 %). The burnt soils had a much higher proportion of C in the occluded LF (12 %) compared to the not-burnt soils (7 %) and there was no significant difference among the treatments in the heavy fraction (F) (∼ 70 %). The synergistic effect of burning and grazing caused changes to the soil C dynamics. CO 2 fluxes were increased and the dominant temperature driver was obscured by some other process, such as changes in plant C and N allocation. In addition, the free LF was reduced when these two anthropogenic activities took place on the same site -most likely a result of reduced detritus being incorporated into the soil. A positive finding from this study is that the total soil C stocks were not significantly affected and the long-term (+10 years) C storage in the occluded LF and heavy F were not negatively impacted. Possibly this is because of low-intensity fire, fire-resilient grasses and because the grazing pressure is below the threshold necessary to cause severe degradation.

show abstract

Ecosystem Carbon Storage Across the Grassland–Forest Transition in the High Andes of Manu National Park, Peru

Cited by 96 publications

References 53 publications

Unraveling the Interplay of Community Assembly Processes Acting on Multiple Niche Axes across Spatial Scales

Unraveling the Interplay of Community Assembly Processes Acting on Multiple Niche Axes across Spatial Scales

Thermally buffered microhabitats recovery in tropical secondary forests following land abandonment

The effects of burning and grazing on soil carbon dynamics in managed Peruvian tropical montane grasslands

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About