Soil Effects on Forest Structure and Diversity in a Moist and a Dry Tropical Forest |
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Authors: | Lourens Poorter Alfredo Alarcón Geoffrey Blate Urbano Choque Todd S. Fredericksen Marco J. Justiniano Claudio Leaño Juan Carlos Licona William Pariona Francis E. Putz Lincoln Quevedo Marisol Toledo |
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Affiliation: | 1. Instituto Boliviano de Investigación Forestal (IBIF), P.O. Box 6204, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia;2. Forest Ecology and Forest Management Group, Centre for Ecosystem Studies, Wageningen University, P. O. Box 47, 6700 AH Wageningen, the Netherlands;3. Department of Biology, P.O. 118526, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611‐8526, U.S.A.;4. School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Ferrum College, Ferrum, VA, U.S.A. |
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Abstract: | Soil characteristics are important drivers of variation in wet tropical forest structure and diversity, but few studies have evaluated these relationships in drier forest types. Using tree and soil data from 48 and 32 1 ha plots, respectively, in a Bolivian moist and dry forest, we asked how soil conditions affect forest structure and diversity within each of the two forest types. After correcting for spatial effects, soil‐vegetation relationships differed between the dry and the moist forest, being strongest in the dry forest. Furthermore, we hypothesized that soil nutrients would play a more important role in the moist forest than in the dry forest because vegetation in the moist forest is less constrained by water availability and thus can show its full potential response to soil fertility. However, contrary to our expectations, we found that soil fertility explained a larger number of forest variables in the dry forest (50 percent) than in the moist forest (17 percent). Shannon diversity declined with soil fertility at both sites, probably because the most dominant, shade‐tolerant species strongly increased in abundance as soil fertility increased. |
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Keywords: | Bolivia forest structure soil characteristics tree species diversity |
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