EGS Seminar – Tuesday 11th December 2012

Tuesday 11^th December, Room E419, 4^th floor, John Dalton East Building, from 1.00-2.00pm.

Dr Daisy Dent

University of Stirling, UK and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama

 Successional trajectories of regenerating tropical forests in central Panama

 Across the tropics, secondary and degraded forests now cover a larger area than undisturbed old-growth forest. However, processes determining successional trajectories in regenerating secondary forests remain poorly understood. From chronosequence studies we know that secondary forests rapidly accumulate diversity and complex structure but much less is known about compositional changes over regeneration and how well chronosequence results can predict dynamic changes within forest stands. We examine tree species composition and functional traits (e.g. wood density, seed mass and maximum tree height) in secondary forests ranging from approximately 20 to 120 years since land abandonment and nearby old-growth forests. Specifically, we investigate if species and functional composition become more similar to old-growth with forest age across the chronosequence and how composition has changed within each forest stand over the last 16 years.