LCZO -- Vegetation, Soil Gas, Soil Moisture -- Canopy Trimming Experiment -- Quebrada Prieta, El Verde -- (2003-2016)

General description of Experiment and Projects: Hurricanes are important drivers of periodic disturbances on tropical forests of the Luquillo Mountauns. The immediate impact of this disturbance is on the canopy biomass which is redistributed from the canopy compartments to the detrital pool of the forest floor hence creating a wide opened canopy. The Canopy Trimming Experiment (CTE) is a long-term experiment designed for two purposes: 1) to decouple the effect of canopy disturbance (e.g., increasing light levels, temperature, moisture, etc.) from those of increased detrital inputs on rates of germination, growth, survival, detritus processing, nutrient cycling, soil conditions, and trophic structure, and 2) to increase the frequency of simulated hurricane effects above background levels to once every six to ten years. Climate change models predict increased frequency and intensity of Caribbean hurricanes (Emmanuel 1987, Goldenberg et al. 2001), and the goal is to evaluate predictions regarding the effects of an increased rate of hurricane disturbance on tabonuco forest (Sanford et al. 1991). The interaction of biotic and abiotic processes, all modified by the disturbance, are key in determining ecosystem responses because they regulate critical ecosystem fluxes and storage associated with detritus decomposition. These processes define detrital dynamics and play a central role in the recovery of forest structure and function after disturbance. Therefore, a third component of this experiment was to implement a series of short-term biotic manipulations nested within the large-scale CTE design, consisting on faunal manipulations to measure the strength of interactions between autotrophic and detrital food webs in the context of hurricane-associated disturbance, which allowed to asses the important components of the foodwebs. The overall hypothesis is as follow: Short-term dynamics of key response variables after disturbance will be a function of the interaction between microclimate and detrital inputs, whereas long-term dynamics (particularly of SOM and NPP) will be a function of detrital inputs.