Logging Impacts on Liana Regeneration And

Abstract

Lianas play important ecological roles and are represented by large numbers of species in tropical forests, but to timber managers, they are a nuisance as they inhibit commercial tree recruitment and growth, increase the risk of injuries to forest workers and increase collateral damage during timber harvests. To determine the response of lianas to a low-intensity selective timber harvest (2.7 trees ha ) carried out with reduced-impact logging (RIL) techniques, liana regeneration was measured on 11 log landings and each of their associated primary skid trails, secondary skid trails and felling gaps. The study was conducted 10 months after a timber harvest in a lowland mixed tropical forest in Belize. Liana diversity, abundance and modes of regeneration (i.e. seed versus vegetative sprouts) were assessed by taxonomic family. Lianas were least abundant on log landings that experienced complete topsoil removal. Similarly, taxonomic family diversity and Shannon's entropy based on Renyi's diversity profile were lowest on log landings. Lianas, particularly those that regenerated directly from seeds, increased in abundance from felling gaps to secondary skid trails to primary skid trails. Liana recruitment was dominated (in order of decreasing abundance) by species in the Fabaceae, Bignoniaceae and Dilleniaceae. Fabaceae contributed the majority of seed-origin liana regeneration while most vegetative sprouts were Bignoniaceae. The results indicated that the low intensity RIL harvest studied retarded liana regeneration only on log landings and did not result in liana proliferation or extreme changes in liana community composition.

An experiential, adaptive, inexpensive, and opportunistic approach to research capacity building in the tropics

“…One of the papers from Belize was published in the same journal (Mesh et al . ), but only after a substantial revision based on reviewers’ comments. The other study from the Belize workshop was published in a higher ranked journal (Forest Ecology and Management; Arevalo et al .…”

“…The three closely related papers from Indonesia were published in the same volume of the Journal of Tropical Forest Science (Hardiyansyah et al 2015, Niti Putro et al 2015, for which the instructors provided an introductory essay on the workshop's theme of silvicultural intensification in the tropics . One of the papers from Belize was published in the same journal (Mesh et al 2017), but only after a substantial revision based on reviewers' comments. The other study from the Belize workshop was published in a higher ranked journal (Forest Ecology and Management;Arevalo et al 2016) and was cited several times in the first year after its release.…”