scholarly journals Characterizing Predictability of Fire Occurrence in Tropical Forests and Grasslands: The Case of Puerto Rico

10.5772/67667 ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Carolina Monmany ◽  
William A. Gould ◽  
Maria Jose Andrade-Nunez ◽  
Grizelle Gonzalez ◽  
Maya Quinones
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Tropical Forests ◽  
Fire Occurrence

scholarly journals On the Shoulders of Giants: Continuing the Legacy of Large-Scale Ecosystem Manipulation Experiments in Puerto Rico

Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tana Wood ◽  
Grizelle González ◽  
Whendee Silver ◽  
Sasha Reed ◽  
Molly Cavaleri
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Tropical Forests ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Luquillo Experimental Forest ◽  
Hurricane Disturbance ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Forest Function

There is a long history of experimental research in the Luquillo Experimental Forest in Puerto Rico. These experiments have addressed questions about biotic thresholds, assessed why communities vary along natural gradients, and have explored forest responses to a range of both anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic disturbances. Combined, these studies cover many of the major disturbances that affect tropical forests around the world and span a wide range of topics, including the effects of forest thinning, ionizing radiation, hurricane disturbance, nitrogen deposition, drought, and global warming. These invaluable studies have greatly enhanced our understanding of tropical forest function under different disturbance regimes and informed the development of management strategies. Here we summarize the major field experiments that have occurred within the Luquillo Experimental Forest. Taken together, results from the major experiments conducted in the Luquillo Experimental Forest demonstrate a high resilience of Puerto Rico’s tropical forests to a variety of stressors.

scholarly journals Trailblazing the Carbon Cycle of Tropical Forests from Puerto Rico

Forests ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Brown ◽  
Ariel Lugo
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Carbon Cycle ◽  
Tropical Forests

scholarly journals Characterization of Dry-Season Phenology in Tropical Forests by Reconstructing Cloud-Free Landsat Time Series

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (23) ◽  
pp. 4736
Author(s):  
Xiaolin Zhu ◽  
Eileen H. Helmer ◽  
David Gwenzi ◽  
Melissa Collin ◽  
Sean Fleming ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Tropical Forests ◽  
Tropical Dry Forest ◽  
Dry Season ◽  
Dry Forest ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Forest Zone ◽  
Fine Resolution ◽  
Field Plots

Fine-resolution satellite imagery is needed for characterizing dry-season phenology in tropical forests since many tropical forests are very spatially heterogeneous due to their diverse species and environmental background. However, fine-resolution satellite imagery, such as Landsat, has a 16-day revisit cycle that makes it hard to obtain a high-quality vegetation index time series due to persistent clouds in tropical regions. To solve this challenge, this study explored the feasibility of employing a series of advanced technologies for reconstructing a high-quality Landsat time series from 2005 to 2009 for detecting dry-season phenology in tropical forests; Puerto Rico was selected as a testbed. We combined bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) correction, cloud and shadow screening, and contaminated pixel interpolation to process the raw Landsat time series and developed a thresholding method to extract 15 phenology metrics. The cloud-masked and gap-filled reconstructed images were tested with simulated clouds. In addition, the derived phenology metrics for grassland and forest in the tropical dry forest zone of Puerto Rico were evaluated with ground observations from PhenoCam data and field plots. Results show that clouds and cloud shadows are more accurately detected than the Landsat cloud quality assessment (QA) band, and that data gaps resulting from those clouds and shadows can be accurately reconstructed (R2 = 0.89). In the tropical dry forest zone, the detected phenology dates (such as greenup, browndown, and dry-season length) generally agree with the PhenoCam observations (R2 = 0.69), and Landsat-based phenology is better than MODIS-based phenology for modeling aboveground biomass and leaf area index collected in field plots (plot size is roughly equivalent to a 3 × 3 Landsat pixels). This study suggests that the Landsat time series can be used to characterize the dry-season phenology of tropical forests after careful processing, which will help to improve our understanding of vegetation–climate interactions at fine scales in tropical forests.

Fire weather and likelihood: characterizing climate space for fire occurrence and extent in Puerto Rico

2017 ◽  
Vol 146 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 117-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley E. Van Beusekom ◽  
William A. Gould ◽  
A. Carolina Monmany ◽  
Azad Henareh Khalyani ◽  
Maya Quiñones ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Fire Weather ◽  
Fire Occurrence ◽  
Climate Space

scholarly journals Ecology of soil arthropod fauna in tropical forests: A review of studies from Puerto Rico

1969 ◽  
pp. 185-201
Author(s):  
Grizelle González ◽  
María Fernanda Barberena-Arias
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Food Webs ◽  
Tropical Forests ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Forest Conversion ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Ecological Studies ◽  
Animal Diversity ◽  
The Tropics

The majority of ecological studies in the tropics deal with organisms participating in grazing food webs, while few deal with the diversity of invertebrates in the soil, leaf litter or dead wood that participate in detrital food webs. For tropical forests, the status of information on soil animal diversity is limited, especially when compared to other ecosystems such as temperate forests, grasslands, and deserts. Given the high rate of forest conversion and persistence of deforestation in the tropics, it is important to study the diversity of its fauna and assess how global changes will affect the linkages between soil biota and ecosystem functioning. This review article focuses on surveys and studies conducted in Puerto Rico, a tropical Caribbean island where a significant number of ecological investigations have focused on the characterization of the edaphic fauna, and how they influence ecosystem processes in forested sites. Results from experimentations suggest that soil fauna is an important determinant of decay and nutrient cycling in these forests. Likewise, this article highlights the importance of methodological constraints in studies that compare these organisms at sites with differing climatic conditions, and focuses on the description of ecological studies related to the effects of microarthropods on litter and wood decay.

Metacommunity structure of tropical forest along an elevation gradient in Puerto Rico

2008 ◽  
Vol 24 (05) ◽  
pp. 525-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Barone ◽  
John Thomlinson ◽  
Pedro Anglada Cordero ◽  
Jess K. Zimmerman
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Tropical Forests ◽  
Environmental Gradients ◽  
Species Turnover ◽  
Elevation Gradient ◽  
Community Change ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Elevation Gradients ◽  
Species Ranges ◽  
Metacommunity Structure

Abstract:The development of metacommunity theory, which suggests that the diversity and composition of communities is influenced by interactions with other communities, has produced new tools for evaluating patterns of community change along environmental gradients. These techniques were used to examine how plant communities changed along elevation gradients in montane tropical forests. Two transects of 0.1-ha vegetation plots were established every 50 m in elevation in the mountains of eastern Puerto Rico. The transects ranged from 300 m to 1000 m asl and 400 m to 900 m. In each plot, all free-standing woody stems greater than 1 cm in diameter at 130 cm in height were marked, measured and identified. Additional data on three similar transects were taken from the literature. The upper or lower boundaries of species ranges were significantly clumped along all five transects. Coherence, a measure of the number of gaps in species distributions, was also significant across all transects, and three transects showed significant, albeit low, nestedness. Four sites had significant species turnover. These results suggest that metacommunity techniques can be useful in searching for patterns of community change present in montane tropical forests.

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