Data and code associated with: Tang et al. Tropical forest carbon sequestration accelerated by nitrogen

Understanding forest carbon sequestration is crucial for predicting and managing the carbon cycle, yet we lack evidence for whether, when and how the carbon sink in tropical forests recovering from land use change is nutrient limited. Here we show how the tropical forest recovery rate responds to experimental nutrient manipulation over a secondary succession gradient in a naturally recovering Central American landscape. Nutrient limitation of aboveground biomass accumulation shifts from strong nitrogen limitation in young forests to no evidence of nitrogen or phosphorus limitation in older secondary or mature forests. Nitrogen addition increases aboveground biomass accumulation by 95% in recently abandoned pasture and 48% in 10-year-old forests. Conversely, we observe no influence of nitrogen on older forests and no evidence of phosphorus limitation at any stage. If our findings of nitrogen limitation extend to young tropical forests globally, nitrogen could prevent the sequestration of 0.69 (0.47-0.84) Gt CO2 each year.The data and code included in this deposit contains the data files and code necessary to create figures and statistical analyses for this study.File list:Tang_etal_readme.docxTang_etal_metadata_public.pdf - contains metadata for all data filesTang_etal_AguaSalud_Soil_classification.pdfTang_etal_Gigante_Soil_classification.pdfTang_etal_biomass_dynamics.csvTang_etal_biomass_recovery.csvTang_etal_P_values_adjustment.csvTang_etal_soil_data.csvTang_etal_total_P_0-30_calculations.xlsxTang_etal_biomass_code.RmdTang_etal_soil_data_analysis.Rmd