There is a new Special Feature of the British
Ecological Society (BES) Journals that includes CTFS
– ForestGEO data from Puerto Rico, United Kingdom, and Panama!
This exciting collaborative and interdisciplinary
Special Feature, Demography Beyond the Population, integrates original lines of
research in the vast field of demography. The articles featuring ForestGEO data
are found in the Journal of Ecology and Functional Ecology.
The Case of Ash Dieback
How can we use modeling to forecast the response of forests to
ash dieback disease? Jessica
Needham and colleagues built models that predict forest community response
to the loss of Fraxinus excelsior L.
(European ash) using demographic data from Wytham Woods. Their methodology
introduces a new way to identifying demographic strategies such as growth,
survival, and fecundity and linking them to population dynamics. This is done through
integral projection and individual-based models that project community
responses to significant tree mortality that will influence regeneration in
woodlands across the globe.
Climate Change and Second-Growth Forests
How
can we address uncertainties in predicting responses of second-growth forests to
climate change? Maria Uriarte and colleagues present
a neighborhood modeling approach
to tackle uncertainties in a second-growth tropical rainforest in Puerto Rico. The dynamic nature and high species diversity of
second-growth forests led Maria Uriarte and colleagues to identify traits to
better understand how individual trees and species will contribute to forest
successional change. Specifically, a hierarchical Bayesian approach was used to
provide insight into the variation in drought tolerance and consequences for
successional trajectories in tropical rainforests given shifts in climate.
Functional Traits as Good
Predictors
How can functional
biology help us better understand tropical forest dynamics? Marco Visser and
colleagues use functional traits as predictors of vital rates across the
life-cycle of tropical trees in Barro Colorado Island, Panama. This
model-averaging approach lessens the uncertainty in predictive power of
functional traits by identifying easily measured traits that are good
predictors of life history and demographic performance. In this case, wood
density, seed mass, and adult stature served as good predictors of life history.
For more information, please click here for the editorial and here for a Methods in
Ecology and Evolution blog that features CTFS – ForestGEO Ecologist, Sean
McMahon.