LTREB: Long-Term Demography of Tropical Rain Forest Trees

University Of Missouri-Saint Louis, Saint Louis MO

Investigators

Abstract

This research will continue a long-term study of the regeneration of ten ecologically-diverse tree species in tropical rain forest at La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica. The TREES project, begun in 1983, combines annual high-precision diameter and height re-measurement with assessment of individuals microsite conditions, for hundreds of mapped trees spanning the size range form very small juveniles to the largest adults. Recent TREES research has focused on the influence of edaphic factors on tree species distributions, comparative diameter growth and height growth patterns among focal species, associations of demographic and ecological traits through life history, and tree growth responses to climate variation, particularly the increasing global temperature. Over the next two years, research will (1) extend the record of annual tree height and increment growth, (2) extend work on the relations of tree spatial distributions to edaphic factors, (3) quantify the time scale of suppression for most of these species, and (4) quantify the life history dynamics of one of the dominant trees in this forest, Pentaclethra macroloba. The TREES project has successfully addressed the considerable challenges of understanding the growth and demography of long-lived tropical forest trees. Continued measurement of demographic parameters will help to provide a direct link between global climate fluctuations, atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and the growth and dynamics of tropic forest vegetation.