Intra-annual variation in microclimatic conditions in relation to vegetation type and structure in two tropical dry forests undergoing secondary succession

Schwartz, Naomi B.; Medvigy, D.; Tijerin, Julian; Peréz‐Aviles, Daniel; Rivera-Polanco, David; Pereira, Damaris; G., German Vargas; Werden, Leland K.; Du, Dan V.; Arnold, Logan; Powers, Jennifer S.

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2022.120132

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…3A). Combined, the results imply that successional communities were drought sensitive (based on main drought effect), but also that as succession proceeded, the negative drought impact on sapling growth was increasingly ameliorated by denser canopies, which created a buffered microclimate that retained soil water during drought and humidity in the understory (Lebrija-Trejos et al, 2011;Schwartz et al, 2022;Teixeira et al, 2020;Vinod et al, 2023). This successional process is also supported by Bretfeld et al (2018), who found that soil water content was significantly higher in older than in younger forests in our study area during the 2015/16 El Niño event.…”

Section: Successional Patterns At Community Levelmentioning

confidence: 97%

Species- and community-level demographic responses of saplings to drought during tropical secondary succession

Lai,

Cheeseman,

Hall

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Naturally regenerating secondary vegetation dominates the tropical forest landscapes, showing a remarkable capacity to sequester carbon, but such a role is threatened by increasing drought predicted with climate change. To understand how secondary forest species and communities respond to drought, we leverage a long-term chronosequence of tropical successional forests from Central Panama that coincided with the 2015/16 El Niño extreme drought event to analyse the diameter growth and mortality of 113,505 saplings and 60 species under water stress. As expected, drought negatively impacted most species in either diameter growth, mortality, or both. However, we additionally found that neighbourhood basal area ameliorated or exacerbated the effect of drought on diameter growth of some species. These species-level demographic responses aggregated to a community-level shift from the dominance of drought-susceptible saplings to more drought-tolerant saplings during stand development. Our study highlights that sapling communities in older secondary forests were less sensitive to drought: they suffered less growth reduction possibly due to denser canopies that mitigated evapotranspiration, and they also experienced lower mortality due to a higher relative abundance of drought-resistant species. Saplings in young secondary forests were overall more susceptible to drought, but their responses were also highly variable, suggesting a potential in understanding why some young secondary forest communities are more drought-tolerant, a knowledge that can be leveraged to restore resilient forests necessary to withstand a future of increased drought frequency and severity under a changing climate.

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Section: Successional Patterns At Community Levelmentioning

confidence: 97%

Species- and community-level demographic responses of saplings to drought during tropical secondary succession

Lai,

Cheeseman,

Hall

et al. 2024

Preprint

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“…ED2 is a vegetation demographic model that simulates the dynamics of plant cohorts (Fisher et al, 2018). The model has recently been validated in both tropical dry forests (Xu et al, 2016;Medvigy et al, 2019;Schwartz et al, 2022) and tropical moist forests (Levy-Varon et al, 2019;Longo et al, 2019b;Xu et al, 2021). The source code is publicly available on GitHub (https://github.com/EDmodel/ED2).…”

Section: Model Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tropical Dry Forest Response to Nutrient Fertilization: A Model Validation and Sensitivity Analysis

Waring

Powers

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Abstract. Soil nutrients, especially nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), regulate plant growth and hence influence carbon fluxes between the land surface and atmosphere. However, how forests adjust biomass partitioning to leaves, wood, and fine roots in response to N and/or P fertilization remains puzzling. Recent work in tropical forests suggests that trees increase fine root production under P fertilization, but it is unclear whether mechanistic models can reproduce this dynamic. In order to better understand mechanisms governing nutrient effects on plant allocation and improve models, we used the nutrient enabled ED2 model to simulate a fertilization experiment being conducted in a secondary tropical dry forest in Costa Rica. We evaluated how different allocation parameterizations affected model performance. These parameterizations prescribed a linear relationship between relative allocation to fine roots and soil P concentrations. The slope of the linear relationship was allowed to be positive, negative, or zero. Some parameterizations realistically simulated leaf, wood and fine root production, and these parameterizations all assumed a positive relationship between relative allocation to fine roots and soil P concentration. On a thirty-year timescale, under unfertilized conditions, our model predicted the largest aboveground biomass (AGB) accumulation when relative allocation to fine roots was positively related to soil P concentration. However, this result was mostly driven by increased water use rather than decreased nutrient limitation. On a thirty-year timescale with P fertilization, the assumption of a positive correlation between relative allocation to fine roots and soil P concentration led to over-investment to fine roots and reductions in vegetation biomass. Our study demonstrates the need of simultaneous measurements of leaf, wood, and fine root production in nutrient fertilization experiments. Models that do not accurately represent allocation to fine roots may be highly biased in their simulations of AGB, especially when simulating a range of sites with significantly different soil P concentrations.

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“…Changting's soil erosion area has developed various types of vegetation restoration after decades of intensive management [3,4]. However, under the conditions of artificial interference promotion, the succession direction of vegetation communities for vegetation restoration in Changting remains uncertain due to soil erosion, which severely restricts the formulation of subsequent management measures and the maintenance of restoration effects [5,6]. Therefore, understanding the inherent ecological mechanisms involved in the process of vegetation restoration across various degraded regions is of significant importance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic Shifts in Soil Fungal Functional Group Characteristics across Distinct Vegetation Types during Ecological Restoration in Degraded Red Soil Regions

Hou,

Yu,

Han

et al. 2024

Forests

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The red soil region in southern China has become the second-largest soil erosion area after the Loess Plateau. The evolutionary trajectory of soil fungi during vegetation restoration in acidic red soil regions remains a subject of inquiry. The investigation focused on the restoration process of an ecosystem facing intense degradation in the southern regions of China by studying four distinctive vegetation types: barren land (BL), pure Pinus massoniana forest (CF), mixed coniferous (CBF), and broad-leaved forest (BF). The outcomes revealed considerable enhancements in soil properties’ attributes, evident through a gradual reduction in the bulk density of soil (SBD) and a corresponding increment in soil moisture content (MC), total nitrogen (TN), total carbon (TC), total potassium (TK), soil organic matter (SOM), and available potassium (AK) as vegetation restoration advanced. An intriguing trend emerged where the relative abundance of Ascomycota fungi displayed a declining trajectory, whereas Basidiomycota fungi exhibited an ascending trend with the progression of vegetation restoration. Specifically, broad-leaved forests exhibited a significantly greater relative abundance of Penicillium fungi compared to other stages of vegetation restoration. The diversity of soil fungal communities increased in tandem with vegetation restoration. A redundancy analysis illuminated a strong and positive relationship between the abundance of major soil fungi and soil pH, TN, and TC (key influencers of acidic red soil fungal populations). This study provided additional evidence of an elevation in ectomycorrhizal and saprophytic trophic fungi, signifying a transition that enhances the vegetation’s ability to capture water and nutrients. This, in turn, contributes to the overall enrichment and diversity of vegetation communities during the progression of restoration.

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Intra-annual variation in microclimatic conditions in relation to vegetation type and structure in two tropical dry forests undergoing secondary succession

Cited by 11 publications

References 63 publications

Species- and community-level demographic responses of saplings to drought during tropical secondary succession

Species- and community-level demographic responses of saplings to drought during tropical secondary succession

Tropical Dry Forest Response to Nutrient Fertilization: A Model Validation and Sensitivity Analysis

Dynamic Shifts in Soil Fungal Functional Group Characteristics across Distinct Vegetation Types during Ecological Restoration in Degraded Red Soil Regions

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