Evaluating Turnover in Tropical Forests

Evaluating turnover in tropical forests.

Increasing turnover through time in tropical forests.

Tree turnover rates were assessed at 40 tropical forest sites. Averaged across inventoried forests, turnover, as measured by tree mortality and recruitment, has increased since the 1950s, with an apparent pantropical acceleration since 1980. Among 22 mature forest sites with two or more inventory periods, forest turnover also increased. The trend in forest dynamics may have profound effects on ...

Changes in Growth of Tropical Forests: Evaluating Potential Biases

Over the past century almost every ecosystem on Earth has come under the influence of changes in atmospheric composition and climate caused by human activity. Tropical forests are among the most productive and extensive ecosystems, and it has been hypothesized that both the dynamics and biomass of apparently undisturbed, old-growth tropical forests have been changing in response to atmospheric ...

EVALUATING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF SUBSISTENCE HUNTING IN TROPICAL FORESTS by

Large-bodied vertebrates are perhaps the most ecologically sensitive extracts of tropical forests, and their sustained management will become increasingly critical to the long-term integrity of these ecosystems. This paper presents the results of a long-term programme (1986-1996) of wildlife surveys, based on a standard linetransect censusing technique, which was designed to quantify the impact...

Tropical Forests

To understand where and why tropical forests exist, one must begin with some essential facts of geography and climatic systems. By definition, ‘the tropics’ lie between 238N and 238S latitude, the area within which the sun lies directly overhead at some point in its seasonal progression. Thefluxof solar energywithin this region is high, due to the fact that incoming sunlight is projected at a 9...