Wood Fiber Resources of World and Tropical Forests

Asynchronism in leaf and wood production in tropical forests

Tropical forests in a warming world.

Global models suggest tropical forests could face significant and unprecedented warming within the next two decades (Diffenbaugh & Scherer, 2011). These findings, combined with evidence that tropical forests may be near a high temperature threshold, suggest that these systems may be more vulnerable to climate change than previously believed (Clark et al., 2003; Doughty & Goulden, 2008). Current...

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...

Fragmentation and Tropical Forests

Model systems are needed to examine fragment area effects on food web structure where other factors are relatively constant. Human-induced fragmentation is typically associated with human activities, which may complicate interpretation of results from fragmentation studies. Forests on Hawai`i Island periodically experience a unique natural disturbance where lava flows into forests, leaving behi...

Tropical Rain Forests