• Energy Research

Tropical forests harbor the greatest terrestrial biodiversity and provide various ecosystem services. The increase of human activities on these forests, among which logging, makes the conservation of biodiversity and associated services strongly dependent on the sustainability of these activities. However the indicators commonly used to assess the impact of forest exploitation, namely species richness and biomass, provide a limited understanding of their sustainability. Here, we assessed the sustainability of common forest exploitation in the Guiana Shield studying the recovery of two ecosystem services i.e. carbon storage and wood stock, and an ecosystem function i.e. seed dispersal by animals. Specifically, we compared total and commercial biomass, as well as functional composition in seed size of animal-dispersed species in replicated forest plots before and 27 years after exploitation. Species richness is also studied to allow comparison. While species richness was not affected by forest exploitation, total and commercial biomass as well as seed size of animal-dispersed species decreased 27 years after exploitation, similarly to forests affected by hunting. These results show that ecosystem services and function likely did not recover even at the lowest intensity of forest exploitation studied, questioning the sustainability of the most common rotation-cycle duration applied in the tropics.

Tropical forests harbor the greatest terrestrial biodiversity and provide various ecosystem services. The increase of human activities on these forests, among which logging, makes the conservation of biodiversity and associated services strongly dependent on the sustainability of these activities. However the indicators commonly used to assess the impact of forest exploitation, namely species richness and biomass, provide a limited understanding of their sustainability. Here, we assessed the sustainability of common forest exploitation in the Guiana Shield studying the recovery of two ecosystem services i.e. carbon storage and wood stock, and an ecosystem function i.e. seed dispersal by animals. Specifically, we compared total and commercial biomass, as well as functional composition in seed size of animal-dispersed species in replicated forest plots before and 27 years after exploitation. Species richness is also studied to allow comparison. While species richness was not affected by forest exploitation, total and commercial biomass as well as seed size of animal-dispersed species decreased 27 years after exploitation, similarly to forests affected by hunting. These results show that ecosystem services and function likely did not recover even at the lowest intensity of forest exploitation studied, questioning the sustainability of the most common rotation-cycle duration applied in the tropics.

AbstractWe retrace the development of tropical phenology research, compare temperate phenology study to that in the tropics and highlight the advances currently being made in this flourishing discipline. The synthesis draws attention to how fundamentally different tropical phenology data can be to temperate data. Tropical plants lack a phase of winter dormancy and may grow and reproduce continually. Seasonal patterns in environmental parameters, such as rainfall, irradiance or temperature, do not necessarily coincide temporally, as they do in temperate climes. We review recent research on the drivers of phenophase cycles in individual trees, species and communities and highlight how significant innovations in biometric tools and approaches are being driven by the need to deal with circular data, the complexity of defining tropical seasons and the myriad growth and reproductive strategies used by tropical plants. We discuss how important the use of leaf phenology (or remotely‐sensed proxies of leaf phenophases) has become in tracking biome responses to climate change at the continental level and how important the phenophase of forests can be in determining local weather conditions. We also highlight how powerful analyses of plant responses are hampered at many tropical sites by a lack of contextual data on local environmental conditions. We conclude by arguing that there is a clear global benefit in increasing long term tropical phenology data collection and improving empirical collection of local climate measures, contemporary to the phenology data. Directing more resources to research in this sector will be widely beneficial.

AbstractWe retrace the development of tropical phenology research, compare temperate phenology study to that in the tropics and highlight the advances currently being made in this flourishing discipline. The synthesis draws attention to how fundamentally different tropical phenology data can be to temperate data. Tropical plants lack a phase of winter dormancy and may grow and reproduce continually. Seasonal patterns in environmental parameters, such as rainfall, irradiance or temperature, do not necessarily coincide temporally, as they do in temperate climes. We review recent research on the drivers of phenophase cycles in individual trees, species and communities and highlight how significant innovations in biometric tools and approaches are being driven by the need to deal with circular data, the complexity of defining tropical seasons and the myriad growth and reproductive strategies used by tropical plants. We discuss how important the use of leaf phenology (or remotely‐sensed proxies of leaf phenophases) has become in tracking biome responses to climate change at the continental level and how important the phenophase of forests can be in determining local weather conditions. We also highlight how powerful analyses of plant responses are hampered at many tropical sites by a lack of contextual data on local environmental conditions. We conclude by arguing that there is a clear global benefit in increasing long term tropical phenology data collection and improving empirical collection of local climate measures, contemporary to the phenology data. Directing more resources to research in this sector will be widely beneficial.