International Research Fellowship Program: Linking Large-scale Tree Inventory Efforts in the World's Richest Forests

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

0107368 Pitman The International Research Fellow Awards Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will provide twelve months of support to Dr. Nigel C. Pitman to work with Dr. Eduardo E. Ceron at the Universidad Central del Ecuador in Quito, Ecuador on a study of the linking of large-scale tree inventory efforts in the world's richest forests . In the past, plant ecologists had to use data from just one or two vegetation samples, datasets often comprised of fewer individual plants than the number of species in the flora of the area they were studying. Today, there are large networks with dozens of hectares of tree plots scattered over hundreds of square kilometers. This project will link two of these large-scale datasets via a transect of new plots joining Ecuador and Iquitos, and a web-based standardization program in Ecuadorean and Peruvian herbaria. The project will provide specific answers to questions about how and why forest composition and diversity vary on a regional scale across Amazonia, and it will permit careful comparisons of patterns of habitat preferences, dominance and rarity between these two well-studied sites. Finally, the project will bring together Ecuadorean and Peruvian botanists and institutions, until recently separated by a 45-year border conflict, and provide a first demonstration of how to link other Amazonian networks in the future . Dr. Ceron has carried out quantitative inventories of Ecuadorean vegetation and has long-term experience in identifying tree species in the Amazonian lowlands.