Specific gravity of woody tissue from lowland Neotropical plants: differences among forest types

Abstract

Abstract. Wood density, or more precisely, wood specific gravity, is an important parameter when estimating aboveground biomass, which has become a central tool for the management and conservation of forests around the world. When using biomass allometric equations for tropical forests, researchers are often required to assume phylogenetic trait conservatism, which allows us to assign genus-and family-level wood specific gravity mean values, to many woody species. The lack of information on this trait for many Neotropical plant species has led to an imprecise estimation of the biomass stored in Neotropical forests. The data presented here has information of woody tissue specific gravity from 2,602 individual stems for 386 species, including trees, lianas, and hemi-epiphytes of lowland tropical forests in Colombia. This data set was produced by us collecting wood cores from woody species in five localities in the Orinoco and Magdalena Basins in Colombia. We found lower mean specific gravity values in várzea than in terra firme and igapó.

Forest Structure, Diversity and Dynamics in Terra Firme and Igapó Gallery Forests in the Colombian Orinoco Basin

“…The igapó forest had the highest amount of AGB (170 t/ha). Although, on average, terra firme trees are taller and have greater DBH values than igapó, this result can be explained by the difference in the number of individuals per hectare, i.e., stem density (Table 1), and the wood density of individuals in each forest type [4,65]. According to the results of Casas et al 2017 [65] for the same study system, igapó forest contained trees with higher wood densities compared to terra firme forest.…”

“…Although, on average, terra firme trees are taller and have greater DBH values than igapó, this result can be explained by the difference in the number of individuals per hectare, i.e., stem density (Table 1), and the wood density of individuals in each forest type [4,65]. According to the results of Casas et al 2017 [65] for the same study system, igapó forest contained trees with higher wood densities compared to terra firme forest. This result may be related to the lack of nutrients in igapó soils and consequent lower growth rates, which produce hard woods [78], such as the case of important (Table S1) and slow-growing species such as Duroia micrantha (Ladbr.)…”

“…The equation was assigned according to the life zones proposed by Holdridge et al (1971) to which the study area corresponds (i.e., tropical humid forest) [64]. The wood density of each species (genus or family mean were used when species identity was unknown) was obtained from the database available from L.F. Casas et al 2017 [65], which presents data from wood cores collected from the same study system. AGB was estimated for each plot and each forest type for each census period.…”

Forest fragments of the Andean piedmont as carbon sinks

“…For cases where the WSG was not measured by us (33% of species), we used information on species measured by our research group, following the same protocols (Casas et al, 2016), and values reported in the Dryad global database (Chave et al, 2009;Zanne et al, 2009). For species with no reported WSG values in either of the databases, we used the mean for the genus or family (using a combined database with the three sources mentioned previously), assuming that this trait is phylogenetically conserved (Chave et al, 2006).…”

“…Histogram of the distribution of wood specific gravity values for tree species in three forest fragments of the Andean piedmont in Meta, Colombia. Values were assigned to each individual stem from a species average calculated based on the measurements made by us in the present study and complemented with information from unpublished data (Casas et al, 2016). For species missing in our database (10%) we used information from Global Data Bases (Zanne et al, 2009).…”