PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #44: Disturbance ecology of forests: Animals, wind, gaps, edges. Presiding: S. Archer.
Wednesday, August 8, 2001. 8:00 AM to 11:45 AM. Hall of Ideas G.
Resilience of litterfall production after a hurricane in the Luquillo Experimental Forest, Puerto Rico.
Warren, Matthew1, Zimmerman, Jess1, Zou, Xiaoming1, Lodge, D.2, Walker, Lawrence3, 1 2 3
ABSTRACT- Tropical lowland and montane forests differ in structure and productivity, and many factors have been suggested to cause the dissimilarity. Research on the controls of productivity in these ecosystems has primarily focused on climate, nutrient limitation, and other edaphic factors. The importance of disturbance on productivity is less well studied. Fertilization and debris removal treatments were used to investigate the resilience of forest litter production in relation to nutrient limitation in a lowland wet tropical forest and lower montane tropical rainforest (dwarf forest) over nine years following a hurricane disturbance in eastern Puerto Rico. The lowland forest responded more rapidly to fertilization treatments than the dwarf forest, however treatment effects were transient, and diminished in the latter years of the study. The removal of organic debris from the lowland site also induced an increase in litter production, although it was less pronounced than fertilization. Litterfall production in fertilized plots in the dwarf forest remained significantly higher throughout the study period. Fertilization plots returned to prehurricane production values more rapidly than control plots, suggesting the importance of nutrient limitation in the early years of forest regeneration following hurricane disturbance.
KEY WORDS: disturbance, tropical forests, litter, fertilization