Aboveground net primary productivity in regenerating seasonally dry tropical forest: contributions of rainfall, forest age, and soil

Identifying factors controlling forest productivity is critical to understanding forest-climate change feedbacks, modeling vegetation dynamics, and carbon finance schemes. However, little research has focused on productivity in regenerating tropical forest which are expanding in their fraction of global area have an order of magnitude larger carbon uptake rates relative to older forest.

We examined aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) and its components (wood production and litterfall) over ten years in forest plots that vary in successional age, soil characteristics, and species composition using band dendrometers and litterfall traps in regenerating seasonally dry tropical forests in northwestern Costa Rica.

We show that the components of ANPP are differentially driven by age and annual rainfall and that local soil variation is important. Total ANPP was explained by a combination of age, annual rainfall, and soil variation. Wood production comprised 35% of ANPP on average...