Reassembly of a tropical rainforest: A new chronosequence in the Chocó tested with the recovery of tree attributes

作者：Sebastián Escobar, Felicity L. Newell, María‐José Endara, Juan Ernesto Guevara, Anna R. Landim, Eike Lena Neuschulz, Ronja Hausmann, Jörg Müller, Karen Pedersen, Matthias Schleuning, Constance J. Tremlett, Edith Villa‐Galaviz, Hinrich Schaefer, David A. Donoso, Nico Blüthgen · 发表于：Ecosphere · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1002/ecs2.70157 · 被引用次数：33 · 研究领域：Tree-ring climate responses、Environmental and Cultural Studies in Latin America and Beyond、Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies

Abstract From hunting and foraging to clearing land for agriculture, humans modify forest biodiversity, landscapes, and climate. Forests constantly undergo disturbance–recovery dynamics, and understanding them is a major objective of ecologists and conservationists. Chronosequences are a useful tool for understanding global restoration efforts. They represent a space‐for‐time substitution approach suited for the quantification of the resistance of ecosystem properties to withstand disturbance and the resilience of these properties until reaching pre‐disturbance levels. Here, we introduce a newly established chronosequence with 62 plots in active cacao plantations and pastures, early and late regeneration, and old‐growth forests in the extremely wet Chocó rainforest. Plots were located across a 200‐km 2 area, with a total area of 95 km 2 within a 1‐km radius. Our chronosequence covers the largest total area of plots compared with others in the Neotropics with 15.5 ha. Plots ranged from 159 to 615 m above sea level in a forested landscape with 74% ± 2.8% forest cover within a 1‐km radius including substantial old‐growth forest cover. Land‐use legacy and regeneration time were not confounded by elevation. We tested how six forest structure variables (maximum tree height and dbh, basal area, number of stems, vertical vegetation heterogeneity, and light availability), aboveground biomass (AGB), and rarefied tree species richness change along our chronosequence. Forest structure va...