CTFS‐ForestGEO: a worldwide network monitoring forests in an era of global change
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Date
2015Author
Anderson‐Teixeira, KJ
Davies, S J
Bennett, AC
Gonzalez‐Akre, E B
Muller‐Landau, H C
Joseph, Wright S
Kassim, AR
Language
enMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Global change is impacting forests worldwide, threatening biodiversity and ecosystem services including climate
regulation. Understanding how forests respond is critical to forest conservation and climate protection. This review
describes an international network of 59 long-term forest dynamics research sites (CTFS-ForestGEO) useful for characterizing
forest responses to global change. Within very large plots (median size 25 ha), all stems≥1 cm diameter
are identified to species, mapped, and regularly recensused according to standardized protocols. CTFS-ForestGEO
spans 25°S–61°N latitude, is generally representative of the range of bioclimatic, edaphic, and topographic conditions
experienced by forests worldwide, and is the only forest monitoring network that applies a standardized protocol to each of the world’s major forest biomes. Supplementary standardized measurements at subsets of the sites provide
additional information on plants, animals, and ecosystem and environmental variables. CTFS-ForestGEO sites are
experiencing multifaceted anthropogenic global change pressures including warming (average 0.61°C), changes in
precipitation (up to30% change), atmospheric deposition of nitrogen and sulfur compounds (up to 3.8 g
Nm2 yr 1 and 3.1 g S m2 yr 1), and forest fragmentation in the surrounding landscape (up to 88% reduced tree
cover within 5 km). The broad suite of measurements made at CTFS-ForestGEO sites makes it possible to investigate
the complex ways in which global change is impacting forest dynamics. Ongoing research across the CTFSForestGEO
network is yielding insights into how and why the forests are changing, and continued monitoring will
provide vital contributions to understanding worldwide forest diversity and dynamics in an era of global change.
Citation
Anderson‐Teixeira, K. J., Davies, S. J., Bennett, A. C., Gonzalez‐Akre, E. B., Muller‐Landau, H. C., Joseph Wright, S., ... & Kassim, A. R. (2015). CTFS‐ForestGEO: a worldwide network monitoring forests in an era of global change. Global change biology, 21(2), 528-549.Publisher
University of Nairobi
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