10.5521/ForestPlots.net/2016_3
Sullivan, Martin J. P.
Talbot, Joey
Lewis, Simon L.
Phillips, Oliver L.
Qie, Lan
Begne, Serge K.
Chave, Jerome
Cuni Sanchez, Aida
Hubau, Wannes
Lopez-Gonzalez, Gabriela
Miles, Lera
Monteagudo-Mendoza, Abel
Sonke, Bonaventure
Sunderland, Terry
ter Steege, Hans
White, Lee J.T.
Affum-Baffoe, Kofi
Aiba, Shin-ichiro
Almeida, Everton C.
Almeida de Oliveira, Edmar
Alvarez-Loayza, Patricia
Alvarez Davila, Esteban
Andrade, Ana
Aragao, Luiz E.O.C.
Ashton, Peter
Aymard C., Gerado A.
Baker, Timothy R.
Balinga, Michael
Banin, Lindsay F.
Baraloto, Christopher
Bastin, Jean-Francois
Berry, Nicholas
Bogaert, Jan
Bonal, Damien
Bongers, Frans
Brienen, Roel
Camargo, Jose Luis C.
Ceron, Carlos
Chama Moscoso, Victor
Chezeaux, Eric
Clark, Connie J.
Cogollo Pacheco, Alvaro
Comiskey, James A.
Cornejo Valverde, Fernando
Coronado, Euridice N. Honorio
Dargie, Greta
Davies, Stuart J.
De Canniere, Charles
Djuikouo K., Marie Noel
Doucet, Jean-Louis
Erwin, Terry L.
Espejo, Javier Silva
Ewango, Corneille E.N.
Fauset, Sophie
Feldpausch, Ted R.
Herrera, Rafael
Gilpin, Martin
Gloor, Emanuel
Hall, Jefferson
Harris, David J.
Hart, Terese B.
Kartawinata, Kuswata
Kho, Lip Khoon
Kitayama, Kanehiro
Laurance, Susan G.W.
Laurance, William F.
Leal, Miguel E.
Lovejoy, Thomas
Lovett, Jon C.
Lukasu, Faustin Mpanya
Makana, Jean-Remy
Malhi, Yadvinder
Maracahipes, Leandro
Marimon, Beatriz S.
Marimon Junior, Ben Hur
Marshall, Andrew R.
Morandi, Paulo S.
Mukendi, John Tshibamba
Mukinzi, Jaques
Nilus, Reuben
Nunez Vargas, Percy
Pallqui Camacho, Nadir C.
Pardo, Guido
Pena-Claros, Marielos
Petronelli, Pascal
Pikavance, Georgia C.
Poulsen, Axel Dalberg
Poulsen, John R.
Primack, Richard B.
Priyadi, Hari
Quesada, Carlos A.
Reitsma, Jan
Rejou-Mechain, Maxime
Restrepo Correa, Zorayda
Ruitishauser, Ervan
Salim, Kamariah Abu
Salomao, Rafael P.
Samsoedin, Ismayadi
Sheil, Douglas
Sierra, Rodrigo
Silveira, Marcos
Slik, J.W. Ferry
Steel, Lisa
Taedoumg, Hermann
Tan, Sylvester
Terborgh, John W.
Thomas, Sean C.
Toledo, Marisol
Umunay, Peter
Valenzuela Gamarra, Luis
Vieira, Ima C.G.
Vos, Vincent A.
Wang, Ophelia
Willcock, Simon
Zemagho, Lise
Plot Data from "Diversity and carbon storage across the tropical forest biome."
ForestPlots.net
2016
Diversity
Carbon storage
Tropical forest
eng
Dataset
csv file
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Tropical forests are global centres of both biodiversity and carbon storage. Many tropical countries aspire to protect forest to fulfil biodiversity and climate mitigation policy targets, but the conservation strategies needed to achieve these two functions depend critically on the tropical forest diversity-carbon relationship and this remains largely unexplored. Attempts to assess and understand this relationship in tropical forest ecosystems have been hindered by the scarcity of inventories where carbon storage in aboveground biomass and species identifications have been simultaneously and robustly quantified. Here, we compile a unique pan-tropical dataset of 360 plots located in old-growth closed-canopy forest, surveyed using standardised methods, allowing a multi-scale evaluation of the relationship between carbon storage and tree diversity. We find strongly contrasting variation in diversity and carbon among continents. Thus, on average, African forests have high carbon storage but relatively low diversity, Amazonian forests have high diversity but less carbon, and Southeast Asian forests have both high diversity and high carbon storage. Carbon-diversity relationships among all plots across the tropics are absent, and within continents are either weak (Asia) or absent (Amazonia, Africa). Within 1 ha plots a weak positive relationship is detectable, indicating that diversity effects in tropical forests may be scale dependent. The absence of clear diversity-carbon relationships at scales relevant to most conservation planning means that carbon-centred conservation strategies alone would miss many high diversity ecosystems. As tropical forests can have any combination of tree diversity and carbon stocks both will require explicit consideration when optimising policies to manage tropical carbon and biodiversity.