EAGER: The 2010 Recensus of the BCI 50 Hetare Plot

Polistes Foundation, Belmont MA

Investigators

Abstract

Many tropical trees are long-lived, thus long term data are critical to document and understand the dynamics of tropical forests. Understanding tropical forest dynamics is becoming even more important because of the large role tropical forests play in global carbon cycling and because of the potential impact of climate change on these ecosystems. The Barro Colorado Island Forest Dynamics Project has conducted 6 censuses of a 50 ha plot over a 25 year period, generating data that have provided unique insights into forest dynamics and community ecology. This project will conduct a seventh 5-year census of the 50 ha plot, adding to the longest running large scale study of tropical forest dynamics. The intellectual merit of the project comes from the value of the long term data set, the insights it will provide into tropical forest dynamics, and its use in testing an array of hypotheses related to tropical forest diversity. The data from these censuses constitute an important broader impact because they are publicly available to scientists for non-commercial use. An ongoing international collaboration and student training are additional broader impacts.