Economically important species dominate aboveground carbon storage in forests of southwestern Amazonia

Tree species in tropical forests provide economically important goods and ecosystem services. In submontane forests of southwestern Amazonia, we investigated the degree to which tree species important for subsistence and trade contribute to aboveground carbon storage (AGC). We used 41 1-hectare plots to determine the species abundance, basal area, and AGC of stems > 10 cm diameter at breast height (dbh). Economically important taxa were classified using ethnobotanical studies and according to their stem density. These taxa (n = 263) accounted for 45% of total stems, 53% of total basal area, and 56% of total AGC, significantly more than taxa with minor or unknown uses (Welch test at p 40 cm and few stems in regeneration classes of dbh < 10 to 20 cm (e.g., Bertholletia excelsa, Cariniana spp., Cedrelinga spp., Ceiba spp., Dipteryx spp.), whereas dominant Tetragastris spp., and Pseudolmedia spp. had most stems in low diameter classes and a median diameter of < 30 cm. Bertholletia excelsa, with 1.5 stems per hectare, showed the highest basal area of any species and accounted for 9% of AGC (11 Mg/ha), twice that of the second-ranking species. Our study shows that economic importance and carbon stocks in trees are closely linked in southwestern Amazonia. Unplanned harvests can disrupt synergistic dual roles altering carbon stocks temporally or permanently. Precautionary measures based on species ecology, demography, and regeneration traits should be at the forefront of REDD+ to reconcile maximum harvesting limits, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable forest management

TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits - the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants - determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits - almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

Leaves of pioneer and later-successional trees have similar lifetime carbon gain in tropical secondary forest

Different life history strategies among tropical rain forest species are generally related to inherent trade-offs in leaf and crown, traits, with early-successional species having traits that facilitate high productivity but a relatively wasteful use of resources and shadetolerant later-successional species exhibiting the opposite strategy. But the degree to which these trait differences contribute to short- and long-term carbon gain of different species that coexist in natural forest has not been quantitatively scaled. We applied a canopy model in combination with measurements of canopy structure, mass distribution, and leaf photosynthesis to determine whole-plant daily photosynthesis (Ppl) of individuals of three short-lived pioneers (SLP), four later-successional species, and three lianas growing together in a 0.5-, 2-, and 3-yr-old secondary tropical forest stand. Whole-plant daily photosynthesis per unit leaf mass (Plfm) and aboveground mass (P m) were assumed to indicate daily returns on investment at the leaf and crown level. By integrating these calculations with measured leaf longevities, we determined the lifetime carbon gain per unit leaf mass. Vegetation height and leaf area index increased with stand age. Two of the SLPs, Trema and Ochroma, increasingly dominated the top of the vegetation. In the 0.5-yr-old stand, these species also had the highest Pm and P lfm values. Whole-plant daily photosynthesis per unit leaf mass tended to decline with stand age but much more strongly so in the later-successional species than in the SLP. Leaf longevity was not significantly correlated with individual leaf traits (e.g., specific leaf area or leaf N content) but was strongly and negatively correlated with Plfm in the youngest stand. Latersuccessional species had considerably greater leaf longevities than SLP. Lifetime carbon gain per unit leaf mass, however, was relatively similar between the different species. Thus due to the strong negative correlation that exists between daily leaf productivity (P lfm) and longevity, short-lived pioneers and later-successional species achieve similar lifetime carbon gain per unit leaf mass in natural secondary forest. This could help explain why the slower-growing latersuccessional species are able to persist during the first years of succession.</p

Appendix A. Mean height, patterns of biomass allocation, leaf area, and light interception per species in each of the three successional stands as well the results Sidak pairwise comparisons between species within stands.

Mean height, patterns of biomass allocation, leaf area, and light interception per species in each of the three successional stands as well the results Sidak pairwise comparisons between species within stands

Participatory action research for conservation and development: Experiences from the Amazon

Research that features participation and action orientation, such as participatory action research (PAR), is especially valuable in contexts where there is rapid change, high social inequality, and great uncertainty about the future, which drives stakeholder demands for information to support their goals. The Amazon offers such a context, for it is a region where diverse stakeholders engage in contestation over environmental governance to address issues such as climate change to achieve conservation and sustainable development. Stakeholder mobilization has changed the terms by which research is conducted, from the definition of priority topics to the application of findings. Due to stakeholder mobilization, more and more research in the Amazon is now necessarily participatory, for stakeholders routinely issue demands about how the research will be conducted and for what purpose. In this paper, we provide an overview of several experiences of implementing methods such as PAR by different teams or networks, focusing on the complementary contributions of outside researchers and local stakeholders. The heart of the paper reports on three broad types of experiences focusing on conservation and development in the Amazon: (1) participatory data collection for co-production of knowledge for environmental governance, (2) inclusive environmental monitoring systems, and (3) innovative models of knowledge exchange to facilitate collective action. Within each type, we report multiple experiences with distinct approaches to participation and action in research. These experiences constitute models that can be replicated in other places for broader impact to support conservation and developmen

Participatory Action Research for Conservation and Development: Experiences from the Amazon

Research that features participation and action orientation, such as participatory action research (PAR), is especially valuable in contexts where there is rapid change, high social inequality, and great uncertainty about the future, which drives stakeholder demands for information to support their goals. The Amazon offers such a context, for it is a region where diverse stakeholders engage in contestation over environmental governance to address issues such as climate change to achieve conservation and sustainable development. Stakeholder mobilization has changed the terms by which research is conducted, from the definition of priority topics to the application of findings. Due to stakeholder mobilization, more and more research in the Amazon is now necessarily participatory, for stakeholders routinely issue demands about how the research will be conducted and for what purpose. In this paper, we provide an overview of several experiences of implementing methods such as PAR by different teams or networks, focusing on the complementary contributions of outside researchers and local stakeholders. The heart of the paper reports on three broad types of experiences focusing on conservation and development in the Amazon: (1) participatory data collection for co-production of knowledge for environmental governance, (2) inclusive environmental monitoring systems, and (3) innovative models of knowledge exchange to facilitate collective action. Within each type, we report multiple experiences with distinct approaches to participation and action in research. These experiences constitute models that can be replicated in other places for broader impact to support conservation and development

BAAD: a biomass and allometry database for woody plants\ud \ud \ud

Understanding how plants are constructed—i.e., how key size dimensions and the amount of mass invested in different tissues varies among individuals—is essential for modeling plant growth, carbon stocks, and energy fluxes in the terrestrial biosphere. Allocation patterns can differ through ontogeny, but also among coexisting species and among species adapted to different environments. While a variety of models dealing with biomass allocation exist, we lack a synthetic understanding of the underlying processes. This is partly due to the lack of suitable data sets for validating and parameterizing models. To that end, we present the Biomass And Allometry Database (BAAD) for woody plants. The BAAD contains 259 634 measurements collected in 176 different studies, from 21 084 individuals across 678 species. Most of these data come from existing publications. However, raw data were rarely made public at the time of publication. Thus, the BAAD contains data from different studies, transformed into standard units and variable names. The transformations were achieved using a common workflow for all raw data files. Other features that distinguish the BAAD are: (i) measurements were for individual plants rather than stand averages; (ii) individuals spanning a range of sizes were measured; (iii) plants from 0.01–100 m in height were included; and (iv) biomass was estimated directly, i.e., not indirectly via allometric equations (except in very large trees where biomass was estimated from detailed sub-sampling). We included both wild and artificially grown plants. The data set contains the following size metrics: total leaf area; area of stem cross-section including sapwood, heartwood, and bark; height of plant and crown base, crown area, and surface area; and the dry mass of leaf, stem, branches, sapwood, heartwood, bark, coarse roots, and fine root tissues. We also report other properties of individuals (age, leaf size, leaf mass per area, wood density, nitrogen content of leaves and wood), as well as information about the growing environment (location, light, experimental treatment, vegetation type) where available. It is our hope that making these data available will improve our ability to understand plant growth, ecosystem dynamics, and carbon cycling in the world's vegetation