Tree growth and mortality of 42 timber species in central Africa

Ligot, Gauthier; Gourlet‐Fleury, Sylvie; Daïnou, Kasso; Gillet, Jean‐François; Rossi, Vivien; Mazengue, Mathurin; Ekome, Stevy Nna; Nkoulou, Yanick Serge; Zombo, Isaac; Forni, Éric; Doucet, Jean‐Louis

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2021.119889

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Both our measurement data on the Populus plantations (demonstrating an increasing standard deviation with mean size increment; see Fig. 2d) and the data available in the literature 11,13,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49] supports the assumption that the growth rate ( µ(x) ) of deciduous trees monotonically increases with the tree diameter. Even without a reset process, this increase cannot go on indefinitely, therefore for large trees, it has to saturate.…”

Section: Growth Ratesupporting

confidence: 84%

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Tree size distribution as the stationary limit of an evolutionary master equation

Kelemen,

Józsa,

Hartel

et al. 2024

Sci Rep

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The diameter distribution of a given species of deciduous trees is well approximated by a Gamma distribution. Here we give new experimental evidence for this conjecture by analyzing deciduous tree size data in mature semi-natural forest and ancient, traditionally managed wood-pasture from Central Europe. These distribution functions collapse on a universal shape if the tree sizes are normalized to the mean value in the considered sample. A new evolutionary master equation is used to model the observed distribution. The model incorporates four ecological processes: tree growth, mortality, recruitment, and diversification. Utilizing simple and realistic kernel functions describing the first three, along with an assumed multiplicative dilution due to diversification, the stationary solution of the master equation yields the experimentally observed Gamma distribution. The model as it is formulated allows an analytically compact solution and has only two fitting parameters whose values are consistent with the experimental data related to these processes. We found that the equilibrium size distribution of tree species with different ecology, originating from two contrastingly different semi-natural ecosystem types can be accurately described by a single dynamical mean-field model.

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Section: Growth Ratesupporting

confidence: 84%

“…The first process is a monotonic growth, which was assumed to increase with tree size and saturate in the limit of large diameters. For analytical simplicity and in agreement with supporting information from literature 11,42,43,45,46,49 , we chose a simple sub-linear function for the above (Eq. 15).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tree size distribution as the stationary limit of an evolutionary master equation

Kelemen,

Józsa,

Hartel

et al. 2024

Sci Rep

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“…The need to monitor the growth of species, and particularly commercial species in large size Central African forest concessions is leading to the increased use of species‐specific trail‐type devices (i.e. group of trees of the same species, within a block, numbered and measured regularly DYNAFAC, 2022; Ligot et al, 2022). These devices should be improved, by supplementing the diameter measured on each tree with a neighbourhood inventory of all trees located within a 15 m radius: this will allow us to quantify the four competition indices that were found to be most effective in this study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competition and site weakly explain tree growth variability in undisturbed Central African moist forests

Gourlet‐Fleury,

Rossi,

Forni

et al. 2023

Journal of Ecology

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Identifying and quantifying factors that influence tree growth are crucial issues to ensure sustainable forest management, particularly in moist tropical forests. Tree growth depends on several factors comprising ontogenic stage, competition by neighbours and environmental conditions. Several studies have focused on one or two of them, but very few have considered all three, especially in Central Africa. We investigated the effects of diameter and competition on tree growth, in four Central African sites characterized by their soil physicochemical properties, at both tree community and population levels. We calibrated growth models using diameter data collected on 29,741 trees between 2015 and 2018, on twelve 4 or 9‐ha plots spread over the four sites. These models included diameter, wood density, competition indices and site effect as explainable variables at the community level and excluded wood density at the population level. At the community level, the best models explained 11% of growth variability with a decreasing effect of species wood density, diameter, site and competition. Our results show that even if low, site effect can result from different soil nutrients depending on both tree size and species wood density. We observed higher tree growth on sites with (i) high exchangeable K, organic C, total N and total P for low wood density species; (ii) high available P and C:N for small trees, high exchangeable Ca and Mg for medium to large trees, all belonging to medium and hard wood density species. At the population level, the best models explained between 0 to 43% of growth variability, with significant competition effect (resp. site effect) for 21 (resp. 9) of the 43 species studied. Site ranking varied greatly between the 9 species concerned, probably reflecting different sensitivities to the scarcity of particular soil nutrients. Synthesis. Our study provides original results on the factors influencing tree growth in Central Africa, showing that the potential effect of soil nutrients depends on tree size and species wood density. Remaining highly unpredictable at the population level, this effect makes it essential to increase the number of dynamics monitoring systems in logging concessions.

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“…As majority of the tree individuals belong to smaller diameter classes (84.5%, 0.1–30 cm DBH), it is expected that the studied SGs would continue to accrue more C in the future. This is so, because low‐diameter class individuals have faster growth rates (Ligot et al, 2022; Zhang et al, 2022). Older SGs are more likely to retain old‐growth trees which contribute substantially to the C stock (Dereje et al, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sacred groves of Central India: Diversity status, carbon storage, and conservation strategies

et al. 2022

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Sacred groves (SGs) play an important role in the conservation of local biodiversity and provide numerous ecosystem services worldwide. We studied how the ecological status of Central Indian SGs contributes to regional tree diversity and carbon (C) storage. We inventoried the trees in fifty‐nine SGs of Madhya Pradesh and recorded a total of 109 tree species (90 genera, 40 families). The most species‐rich families were Fabaceae, Combretaceae, Malvaceae, and Moraceae. The tree density ranged from 75 to 925 individuals ha−1 (mean: 398 ± 32 individuals ha−1), while basal area varied from 2.5 to 69.2 m2 ha−1 (mean: 24.2 ± 1.9 m2 ha−1). The total C stock {tree C + soil organic C (SOC; 0–30 cm)} ranged from 44.7 to 455.4 Mg C ha−1 (mean: 153.8 ± 9.6 Mg C ha−1) across the SGs. The studied SGs represented 74.7% of the total tree diversity and contained 33.1% higher total C stock than the forests of the state. Tree C stock was significantly positively correlated with tree basal area, distance from the nearest village, and number of years of existence. The present study highlights the crucial role of SGs in sustaining regional biodiversity and storing C in biomass and soil. Continued conservation efforts and contained interventions by people are necessary in order to maintain the current role of these SGs as biodiversity and carbon reservoirs of Central India.

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Tree growth and mortality of 42 timber species in central Africa

Cited by 6 publications

References 47 publications

Tree size distribution as the stationary limit of an evolutionary master equation

Tree size distribution as the stationary limit of an evolutionary master equation

Competition and site weakly explain tree growth variability in undisturbed Central African moist forests

Sacred groves of Central India: Diversity status, carbon storage, and conservation strategies

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