The above‐ground coarse wood productivity of 104 Neotropical forest plots

作者：Yadvinder Malhi, Timothy R. Baker, Oliver L. Phillips, Samuel Almeida, Esteban Alvarez, Luzmilla Arroyo, Jérôme Chave, C. I. Czimczik, Anthony Di Fiore, Níro Higuchi, Timothy J. Killeen, Susan G. W. Laurance, William F. Laurance, Simon L. Lewis, Lina María Mercado Montoya, Abel Monteagudo, David Neill, Percy Núñez Vargas, Sandra Patiño, Nigel C. A. Pitman, Carlos Alberto Quesada, Rafael P. Salomão, José Natalino Macedo Silva, Armando Torres Lezama, Rodolfo Vásquez Martínez, John Terborgh, Barbara Vinceti, Jon Lloyd · 发表于：Global Change Biology · 年份：2004 · DOI：10.1111/j.1529-8817.2003.00778.x · 被引用次数：559 · 研究领域：Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics、Forest ecology and management、Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies

Abstract The net primary production of tropical forests and its partitioning between long‐lived carbon pools (wood) and shorter‐lived pools (leaves, fine roots) are of considerable importance in the global carbon cycle. However, these terms have only been studied at a handful of field sites, and with no consistent calculation methodology. Here we calculate above‐ground coarse wood carbon productivity for 104 forest plots in lowland New World humid tropical forests, using a consistent calculation methodology that incorporates corrections for spatial variations in tree‐size distributions and wood density, and for census interval length. Mean wood density is found to be lower in more productive forests. We estimate that above‐ground coarse wood productivity varies by more than a factor of three (between 1.5 and 5.5 Mg C ha−1 a−1) across the Neotropical plots, with a mean value of 3.1 Mg C ha−1 a−1. There appear to be no obvious relationships between wood productivity and rainfall, dry season length or sunshine, but there is some hint of increased productivity at lower temperatures. There is, however, also strong evidence for a positive relationship between wood productivity and soil fertility. Fertile soils tend to become more common towards the Andes and at slightly higher than average elevations, so the apparent temperature/productivity relationship is probably not a direct one. Coarse wood productivity accounts for only a fraction of overall tropical forest net primary produc...