Tropical Forest Ecology - Science topic

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.538.4905&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Regards

check this out.

Convey my thanks for such a relevant article that nicely elaborated of the carbon draining from the terrestrial forest floors arrested in the mangroves ecosystems and that is seen at a glance, I will go through the paper later on and use as citation in my work

If you want to capture geology, aspect, soils, slope etc. the RAPELD system will work well, especially if you plan to include bigger trees or other variables in the future. The explanation in the book that can be downloaded from the PPBio site explains in detail the advantages of long thin (modified Gentry) plots over many small plots, but if you do many small plots they can be placed at equal intervals along the center line of a RAPELD plot and they will still answer many questions.

Good project....We're in the same target...Good luck Natalia Collier

The answer to your question in short is yes. Please have a look at this link.

Gentlemen, also have a look at Attached PDF.

In the Bolivian Amazon the 2017 brazil nut harvest (from natural forests) showed really low volumes. This phenomenon has been linked to changes in precipitation linked to changing hydrology cycles due to climate change and regional deforestation and degradation. The following text (in Spanish I’m sorry) gives more information on this subject.

Vos. V.A. 2017. Propuesta para el componente productivo de los planes de mitigación de la crisis de la castaña de la Amazonía boliviana, Aporte técnico como insumo para los planes de emergencia. Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado Regional Norte Amazónico. Riberalta, Bolivia. Pp. 79. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316120830_Propuesta_para_el_componente_productivo_de_los_planes_de_mitigacion_de_la_crisis_de_la_castana_de_la_Amazonia_boliviana_-_aporte_tecnico_como_insumo_para_los_planes_de_emergencia

We’ve seen similar effects in many other products, including cacao. We’ve noticed the delay and unpredictable start of the rainy season causes the cacao trees to abort flowers and young fruits, while the relatively few fruits that do manage to grow tend to be small and still immature at the end of the rainy season. Many fruits thus mature incompletely affecting cacao quality. I’m afraid this information has not been documented well yet: so far it’s only been written down tentatively in project reports. But I’m currently trying to write down more details in a more scientific description of adaptations and practices to improve climate change resilience in regional cacao production. Please feel free to write me at vincentvosbolivia@gmail.com.

On the edge of the Chinese tropics, Liu Jia-Jia found that fragmentation effects were small in recent (< 50 years old) fragments, presumably because trees mostly live longer than this (Liu, J. -J. & Slik, J. W. F. Forest fragment spatial distribution matters for tropical tree conservation. Biol. Conserv. 171, 99–106 (2014)). These fragments were not managed but I think you might get the same result, with management effects larger in younger fragments which have not yet had time for edge-related mortality and regeneration failures to have an impact.

I agree with all that Simon says, but would add that it is often extremely difficult to get enough data to do a formal IUCN assessment for tropical forest trees, which is why so few - I'd guess less than 1-2% - have been evaluated. The IUCN document makes clear that it is better to classify a species on the basis of the best available information than to not classify it at all, but in practice people seem to be very reluctant to do this, particularly for plants. For canopy trees, Asma's suggestion of remote sensing data is an attractive idea, but although Greg Asner's group has shown that identifying trees to species may be possible, I have never seen it used in a conservation assessment. I'd guess that if a species was very distinctive in some way that was detectable from space this would be possible.

Please follow this PDF attachment.

You need to experiment. Add edible seeds to your traps and use camera-traps to identify who removes them. Most researchers in the Neotropics seem to use open traps and apparently don't lose many seeds to seed predators. In tropical Asia, in contrast, murid rats can climb even plastic supports and selectively remove preferred seeds, so you need either very frequent emptying of traps, or some form of rat excluder. In Hong Kong, where we had no very large seeds, we used a 1.5 X 1.5 cm wire mesh, which worked fine. We tested it with peanuts and sunflower seeds placed in traps. However, a mesh this size might exclude some larger seeds and wind-dispersed fruits, so you need to experiment yourself and see what works locally. But don't follow Neotropical practices without trials: they don't have murid rodents! Seed traps in Asian tropical forests also have problems with macaques, which are too intelligent and strong to exclude in any practical trap design, so you just have to make allowances. And elephants don't like any form of construction in their habitat....

I found this to be quite informative.

One option is to build a ensemble model, but even with this you will need some pseudo-absences in some of the models. As far as I know the only one that do not need any kind of absences is the BIOCLIM.

The wood of teak tree has also high silica content.

The transition period between dry and humid seasons is not my topic. I am working on the regulation of insect development/reproduction by day-length; particularly on the resumption of photoperiodic response after completion of diapause of adults - recurrent photoperiodic response (e.g. Carabus yaconinus [Psyche 2012: Adult diapause in Coleoptera].

I would suggest that there is no single answer to what is the best method: it depends on the life-history of the species. For example, for a species that has a 1;1 sex ratio and breeds only once a year, one can count spawn masses, For a species believed to have only a small home range, mark recapture (or recognition of individual differences using photos) using pitfalls or artificial cover objects will be effective. I recommend Dodd, CK (ed) 2010 Amphibian Ecology and Conservation as giving an excellent summary of the techniques and their limitations.

You should try a stratified sampling approach. Then you select which habitats what to include as factors. That will help you in future analyses.

I would suggest to use PCA  as a first step. I don"t know which environmental variables are you considering in your research? 

Also you can focused on schizocarp seed.

Rattans are monocotyledons close to bamboo and other grasses has role as pioneer species in serial ecological succession. they are colonizers in early serial stage in humid / sub-humid climate.

Yes such situation is very much common in Sal (Shorea robusta) forest, but such falling is common manly in mature tree stand, not in young tree or pole. Also, if you look to the stem it looks like a humepipe. Though no specific cause is reported yet, I think, it might be due to heartwood borer (as said by Sreejith Ashtomoorthy) or maybe some age-related phenomenon or root affecting organism or maybe all. So, more research is needed in this field. 

Felix -

Interesting study - I have done similar work that is closely related, and may change how you think about the problem (see attached).  Make sure you think through sampling and replication issues thoroughly in addition to traits: you need to have more than N=1 replicate of each forest type.

On your question, there is perhaps no "correct" list of traits, but certain traits are more closely linked to conservative vs. acquisitive growth strategies than others.  Your list includes some but not all of the Leaf Economics Spectrum traits (i.e., you have leaf N, leaf P, SLA, and leaf lifespan, but are missing photosynthetic capacity and leaf dark respiration).  I would argue that some measure of whole-plant light compensation point is the best direct measure of shade tolerance (and thus of conservative vs. acquisitive growth strategies), but this is also difficult to measure.  Along these lines crown-level leaf area index is very difficult to measure, and there are in fact very few data published on this in the literature.  It is much more feasible to measure canopy gap fraction, but even that is laborious (see second paper attached).

Vielen glück!

Hello Eric:

In our dry forest plots we have tagged saplings > 30 cm with aluminum Dymo tape. After trying several options this has been by far the best. The Dymo machine itself is a bit expensive but the rolls of aluminum tape are relatively cheap. We attach them to the plants with wire but if you intend to permanently mark very small seedlings this may not be the best way to go. Of course, in this dry forest site we have not faced problems like algae growing on our tapes!

Cheers,

Jorge

Greetings,

as mentioned in the comments above,

if you want to record the ambient sound levels remotely you first need to make sure whether the device you are using is capable in doing so. There are many drawbacks in using a handheld sound level meter as a permanent “station”. Even battery life could be a problem. I believe that you have already checked the specifications of your sound level meter and you have already read the manual. Apart from how to calibrate your device and set the frequency weightings (A or C) and response time (Fast or Slow) you should be able to find out whether you could schedule datalogging sampling rates.

If not, what I would suggest, is the creation of a “smart” sound level sampling protocol that you could follow (by conducting the measurements yourself) in the area under consideration.          

Hi Oswaldo

What I can share with you is that the use of diversity indices is sometimes uncritical. Many students choose to follow the fashion of using either index, without stopping to analyze their research objectives. Today there are numerous texts about the assumptions of each index, the type of data required and even ecological interpretation. If you are familiar with using the R program, you can find multiple routines for the diversity indices, such as vegan, biodiversityR and others. You can follow a lot of argument downloading vegan library written by Oksanen (2013) or biodiversityR library written by Kind(2015)

Dear Carlos,

Hope the following papers are useful to you.

1.Strontium isotopes from the earth to the archaeological skeleton: a review

RA Bentley - Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 2006 - Springer

2.Shell-gathering from mangroves and the seasonality of the Southeast Asian Monsoon using high-resolution stable isotopic analysis of the tropical estuarine bivalve (Geloina erosa) from the Great Cave of Niah, Sarawak: methods and reconnaissance of molluscs of early Holocene and modern times,Mark Stephensa, , , David Matteyb, David D. Gilbertsonc, Colin V. Murray-Wallaced

3.137Cs diffusion in the highly organic sediment of Hidden Lake, Fraser Island, Queensland,T Torgersen, ME Longmore - Marine and Freshwater Research, 1984 - CSIRO

4.Dendrochronology and other applications of tree-ring studies in archaeology

PI Kuniholm - Handbook of archaeological sciences, 2001 - arts.cornell.edu

Best regards

Dear Twinawe

You can read these papers.

Hello Mukete,

It is important to keep in mind that the procedures and methods used to detect change and monitor an area of interest can be different for highly vegetated areas (such as your site I believe) than for those used in not so highly vegetated sites (e.g., arid to semi-arid landscapes).  At times change detection may be more successful if the analyses includes looking at not only differences in the spectral characteristics but also the spatial characteristics at local, intermediate, and regional scales (with the same spatial resolution images; for example, using Landsat TM --- or World View or whatever --- look at the spatial information of a 5x5, 31x31, and 101x101 pixel windows --- so not different resolution data sets).

One last thing: for change detection radiometric calibration (including atmospheric corrections) can be very important (can be absolute or relative).  Below are links to two  papers within research gate related to =: 1)  spatial variability differences in the NIR and Visible bands and 2) atmospheric correction and how a simple DOS can be as good as, or better, than most other methods for highly vegetation areas.

Shows that the spatial variability in highly vegetated areas is higher in the NIR band than the Visible bands --- this is important when the area of interest is highly vegetated and the application is for both spatial and change detection analyses:

Image based atmospheric COST correction model and shows that for highly vegetated areas that a simple DOS type correction does as good as, and at times better, than most other techniques for visible bands --- important for change detection using visible bands for highly vegetation areas of interest:

Dear Aditya,

Have a look at the paper given below:

On the Identities of Anguilla borneensis, A. malgumora, and Muraena malgumora

By  Shun Watanabe, Jun Aoyama, and Katsumi Tsukamoto

 http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1643/CI-14-059 Good luck!!

Firstly you must ask, what do you mean by 'tropical forests' I call tropical forests 'megathermal forests' as their present day restriction to the tropics is an artefact of living in an interglacial during the Quaternary, when the limit of frosts in areas of wet climate approximately coincide with the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. In glacials, this boundary was more equatorward and in the Eocene thermal maximum and also at other times during the Cenozoic much more poleward. Then, are you thinking of rain forests, or forests with a closed canopy? My understanding is that it is the development of a closed canopy which makes rain forests so special and different from other forests. The closed canopy creates a special microclimate and additional niches which help make megathermal rain forests such a harbour for the establishment of new species. My understanding is that such forests first appeared in Western Gondwana (areas such as Gabon or Brazil) in the Late Cretaceous, sometime during the Campanian (84-74 Ma) and then in India as it drifted into the equatorial zone. In N America, they appeared during the Paleocene, and in SE Asia, probably also became established well after their initial appearance in W Gondwana, explaining the low level of origination of angiosperm families in the Southeast Asian region.

Nature has created vertical as well as horizontal layers of farming.

In a complex forest Leaf Area Index (LAI) is about 12-14. This means that in one meter square land area you have 14 meter square leaf area. In this forest you have halophytes and sciophytes along with facultative halophytes and facultative sciophytes. These plants have favourable on unfavourable associations. This canopy makes use of solar radiation which has 680 nm wave length and 700 nm wave length.

The multi tiered canopy has capacity to produce biomass 2.5 times more than the mono cultured crop. If the biomass is to be used as raw material for fulfilling human requirements in that case plant species useful to human beings should be selected.

We have got wonderful results on this experiments. If the demand is of food we have hundreds of forest trees having capacity to feed human race. Examples are Madhuka longifolis (Mahua) it gives carbohydrates, Fatty acids and protein to lesser extent; Phoenix sylvestris (Wild date palm) can be perennial source of sucrose fibres and fruits. There are hundreds of tuberous crops (as and under story of forest canopy) which can feed millions of people. It includes different kinds of yams and kudzu. The list is endless and every ecosystem will have its own flora and fauna.

 I'm semi-retired so have the luxury of ignoring impact factors, but my younger colleagues don't have that choice because university administrators and other gatekeepers have become obsessed with supposedly "objective" indicators of "quality." It's perverse, unfair, and stupid, but it's reality.

Parece, Ymber, que ya tiene la respuesta.  Pero si no, avise p.f. y tataré de averiguar.

Antonio

Yes Appanah & Turnbull published by CIFOR is a good start. There is also the 'Proceedings Fifth Roundtable Conference on Dipterocarps' held at Chiang Mai in 1994 and published by FRIM 1996; this was edited by Appanah and Khoo. FRIM would be your best bet for up to date knowledge on dipterocarp ecology and silvics.

Just using burnt area as measure of peat fire can be underestimation rather. Because, peat fires can be active for long time underneath. Peat fires are difficult to detect directly through remote sensing as there could be forest cover obscuring the direct detection as heat anomaly. The smoke product can be taken as surrogate to peat fire in such cases where direct detection of active fire is not possible. Burnt area can be used in cases where it suits anyway. Regards

You are welcome. 

But, do not forget the role of waterbodies ;). 

There are many papers which showed that the presence of waterbodies were a keystone in the bat activity. Probably, these waterbodies are important areas for insect. 

I've had darvic bands open up because they were subjected to really hot temperatures in a car (left on a dashboard or on a seat). Usually they are ok in a banding kit away from the sun, but it can get pretty hot in a closed up car. Keep bands out of direct sun and hot temps and you should be fine. 

I'm not sure if I used acetal colors with the birds I banded in the tropics, but I use them in my current project in temperate climates. They're just like darvic bands. I only seal depending on the bird species. Cardinals and blackbirds will take a band off so they get sealed. Chickadees, warblers etc. don't usually bother with trying so I don't seal and just press shut. If you need to make cut the band smaller (which with a woodpecker I imagine you don't), I would definitely seal. I used a high temp cautery loop tip to seal this summer and it worked great, but I broke it quickly. I imagine you could use super glue too (with caution to not attach to the bird's leg, I don't particularly like doing this), but I don't believe it will melt with acetone like other material. 

Hope this helps. 

Two factors that affect vegetation are (a) resource competition and (b) allelopathic effects.

Resource requirement of Casurina is  very parsimonious, thatswhy it is used in sandy coastal areas as wind break and for other purposes. Moreover in plantations, resource competition is not very intense.

There are some studies that describes the allelopathic effect of Casurina. They attribute diminished understory layer development in Casurina stands to release of phenolic and tannins from decomposing leaf and branch litter.

You can get more in formation on this through these papers.

1. Role of Allelopathy in Regulating the Understorey Vegetation of Casuarina Equisetifolia by Daizy R. Batish, Harminder Pal Singh. Environmental Forest Science

Forestry Sciences Volume 54, 1998, pp 317-323

2. Pinyopusarerk, Khongsak, and Alan Pennock Newton House. Casuarina: an annotated bibliography of C. equisetifolia, C. junghuhniana and C. oligodon. International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF), 1993.

Pseudomonas type of bacteria species  is a common ice nuclei (IN) positive bacteria found among many other bacteria in clouds. There are several findnings on Pseudomonas syringae over the globe.  In India, we have collected Pseudomonas aeruginosa from Northern part of India and tested the ice nucleating characteristics of this particular bacteria over Indian subcontinent.

Bio-aerosol like bacteria can be nucleated at higher temperature and lower super saturation value that may helps to initiate cloud glaciations more quickly in terms of precipitation.

see "Study of ice nucleating characteristics of Pseudomonas aeruginosa” A. Hazra, M. Saha, U. K. De, J. Mukherjee and K. Goswami,; Journal of Aerosols Science, vol, 35, pp 1405-1414, 2004."

see "“Parameterizing ice nucleation rates using Contact Angle and Activation Energy Derived from Laboratory Data” by J-P Chen  A. Hazra, Z. Levin, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 8, 7431-7449, 2008."

see "“A classical-theory-based parameterization of heterogeneous ice nucleation by mineral dust, soot and biological particles in a global climate model”, Hoose, C.,J. E. Kristjánsson, J.-P. Chen and A. Hazra (2010): Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, 67, 2483-2503."

ITS LIFECYCLE IS OF 38 TO 42 DAYS...

Hi Lisiana, your doubts seem to me to be related to statistical methods and not to the typology used in classifying proximate causes and underlying drivers of deforestation/LUCC, which is clearly explained in several studies by Geist and Lambin (e.g. 2002). As they did this kind of meta-analysis, I think that your best bet will be to dialogue with them or the other scholars that worked in team with them in several other articles and try to define a methodology that can be used from now on by scholars doing a similar research.

best

It's worth looking at the Dutch, too. They were major tropical colonists in Indonesia. An excellent collection of colonial-era maps is available at http://maps.library.leiden.edu/apps/s7

The IMAFLORA http://www.imaflora.org/ and the IMAZON http://www.imazon.org.br/pagina-inicial-en?set_language=en&cl=en are important centers for Climate Chance Investigations in Brazilian Amazon.

At the same time the Federal University of Amazonas (Brazil) is developing a project with traditional communities in Amazonas State. The aim is to promote resilients and productive agricultural systems (such as agroforestry) to reduce and mitigate the C+ emissions. The project is in the beginning (started this year), but we can talk about it.

best regards 

I agree with Graeme that it is highly species specific. In Hawaiian tropical forests the two dominant canopy species (Acacia koa and Metrosideros polymorpha) have entirely different ratios.  Koa trees sprout not too often, grow into saplings virtually everytime, but then often die at the sapling stage.  Ohia on the other hand produce a remarkable amount of seedlings that very rarely make it to the sapling stage, but the saplings virtually will always survive into the tree stage.  Both represent healthy recruitment, even though the ratio of saplings to trees are entirely different because of the different recruitment strategies of the two trees.  Using Gautamʻs framework then the healthy recruitment for the two canopy trees looks like:

Koa - Seedling=Saplings>>Adult

Ohia - Seelings>>>Saplings<Adult

For subcanopy species the regeneration seems to be a little more consistent and follows Gautamʻs general statement of Seedlings>Saplings>Adult, but again shows  variation between species.

Some studies on canopy properties and light regime in forest stands of temperate broadleaves under different management and/or age

 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261025485_Structural_and_ecological_changes_in_holm_oak_coppices_25_years_after_their_conversion_into_high_forest?ev=prf_pub

The first one, maybe genus Discopus. The second one belonging to genus Polyrhaphis. But the best form to be sure is that a specialist see your material.

Mr. Gopakumar,

In Europe and North America there are standardized protocols for forest monitoring, including crown condition assessments, published by ICP-Forests (click the link below).

There are some ICP member countries which assess evergreen broadleaves/conifer forests, and it's possible to adapt the protocols to tropical regions.

Dear Julio, a very good question. I know there is no such data for the Pacific Islands or Australia.

Dear Dernie,

your question is quite broad, the methodology for assessing soil degradation will depend on which kind of degradation do you want to focus on e.g. physical, chemical and so on. In addition, it will depend on the scale you want to work with and the kind of method you want to use, as in qualitative, quantitative or semi-quantitative.

Here goes one paper that focus on the models for predicting soil erosion and sediment yield:

some of them are useful for assessing erosion risk by maps or indicators.

If you explain yourself a bit further, perhaps I can give you more specific options.

Regards,

Richness and endemism are also very important measures. I suggest you to read the book "Measuring biological diversity" written by Anne Magurran (2004). There you will find many ways to answer to your question

Hi Sonia, just some elaboration on what Madelon said, who made some very good points. Usually we measure what we call "soft" traits, i.e. some more or less easily measurable properties of the plants, that are thought to represent physiological responses to the environment. Given that the whole approach is based on the existence of niches, it seems to make sense to make a distinction between alpha and beta niche, where the beta niche is defined by environmental conditions that make up the habitat in which different species can coexist (i.e. environmental filtering) and the alpha niche is defined by the small scale variation in resource availability (like light and soil nutrients; i.e. limiting similarity).

However, given traits could be a response to either of the two opposing mechanisms, in which case it becomes really important what spatial scale (grain size) is being considered, as already mentioned by Madelon. So in response to your question, I would say that yes, it is possible that both mechanisms simultaneously act on a species even if the same trait is considered.

Another important thing to consider is how you are defining your species pool. If you just pool the species of your samples it is possible to detect trait convergence even if the process is competition.

A possible solution to this is to define your regional species pool not by pooling samples but by considering also species that can potentially live in the habitat but are not present in the samples (i.e. the dark diversity)

Hope this makes sense and is helpful.

Hello Matthew. As you mentioned, quantitatively robust methods for estimating densities in dense forest are often impractical (distance sampling) or prohibitively costly in resources (CMR) . Estimating density reliably is always data hungry whether in distance sampling or CMR which generally equates to being prohibitively costly in resources and time. The first question I have is if density estimates are absolutely necessary. If not, as you mentioned, you can apply occupancy modeling.

As you probably are aware of, if a measure of relative abundance would suffice for your needs, within the occupancy modeling realm you can think about site-abundance models, particularly the Royle n-mixture model. The Rowecliffe et al. Random encounter model is interesting, however, it does require additional data in the form of movement rates of study species in the study area which increases data needs and costs.

Of particular interest is a approach for Richard Chandler and Andrew Royle available from the Annals of Applied Statistics http://www.e-publications.org/ims/submission/index.php/AOAS/user/submissionFile/11634?confirm=eb4bf6bc. This approach allows for inferences on density using a spatially-explicit framework and count data. Personally I believe that this is an extremely promising area to be explored.

Multi-state occupancy models are a potential option which can possibly give you a relative measure of abundance (low, medium, high). This is something that I am employing towards getting around the cost issues and can be used with low-tech data (footprints, scat, etc.). I´m not sure if you are interested in single species or communities, what taxa you are interested in, and the research questions. With this info I perhaps could be of more help.

In the end there is no free lunch. To get reliable estimates of density, meaning that the effect of incomplete detection on estimates is taken into account, requires data on the detection process. Such data are costly in resources. If you don´t absolutely need to estimate density there are several options that are perhaps more logistically feasible for your needs.

Actually, the software for multi-variate methods - R program, Canoco, PCORD - most often are based on Sorensen index , and it is really simple and useful one.

I used 5l buckets as pitfall traps for shrews. As I was catching shrews in Western Europe, I dug a whole to put the bucket below ground level into the ground, the put a second bucket, which had some (small holes drilled into the bottom) into the first bucket, so it would be flush with the soil. This way, the water would drain from the pitfall, should it rain. I also added mealworms (and sardines) as food into the traps. Dry cat food should also work.

I also added some wood shavings (i.e. hamsterbedding into the traps).

As shrews are active throughout the 24-hour period, and have a very high metabolic rate, traps should be visited every 2-4 hours to avoid unnecessary casualties.

In the case of mosquitoes, carbon dioxide would be an essential ingredient in any trap method for nocturnal species while diurnal culicine species rely on visual queues. Anophelines are more likely to be attracted by UV sources than culicines, especially in conjunction with updraft suction traps but CO2 should improve your catch significantly. One possibility for the low yields you've experienced, apart from the excellent suggestions of others, is that forest mosquito species may be restricted to the tree canopy - this is certainly the case in Africa. However, you should still be able to trap some specimens at ground level. Otherwise, i would try near water courses where the tree canopy is low or in forest clearings. Forest species tend to be "container breeders", utilizing tree-holes, fruit husks and leaf axils. Perhaps you should try looking for larvae and pupae in such micro-habitats, in addition to trapping adults.