Afrotropical secondary forests exhibit fast diversity and functional recovery, but slow compositional and carbon recovery after shifting cultivation

Questions Human disturbance is increasingly affecting forest dynamics across the tropics. Forests can recover via natural secondary succession to pre-disturbance levels of biodiversity, species composition, and ecosystem carbon stocks. Central Africa will be subject high shifting-cultivation pressure in next decades, but trajectories these properties are still poorly known for Congo basin. We addressed two questions: (1) how does taxonomic functional composition diversity shift during succession; (2) fast do above-ground stocks tropical forests? Location Methods conducted an inventory trees (diameter at breast height [DBH] ? 10 cm), measured traits soil texture content 18 plots, located along six stages (i.e., from agricultural old growth sites). tree diameter, 20% distributed diameter classes, wood all species, leaf that contributed 85% plot basal area. Results showed forests relatively terms diversity, alpha fine-root carbon, with near-old-growth values after decades past disturbance, while floristic exhibited slower recovery. Secondary only partially shifted acquisitive a conservative life history, shifts being largely decoupled traits. Only 43% recovered 60 years regrowth, potentially through slow recovery large-sized stems dominate old-growth forests. Conclusions Our findings underline capacity Afrotropical clear-cutting shifting cultivation. Simultaneously, harbor particular community store large quantity much longer trajectories, stressing need conservation