Data from: Nutrient limitation in tropical secondary forests following different management practices

Secondary forests now make up more than half of all tropical forests, and
constraints on their biomass accumulation will influence the strength of
the terrestrial carbon (C) sink in the coming decades. However the
variance in secondary tropical forest biomass for a given stand age and
climate is high and our understanding of why is limited. We constructed a
model of terrestrial C, nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) cycling to
examine the influence of disturbance and management practices on nutrient
limitation and biomass recovery in secondary tropical forests. The model
predicted that N limited the rate of forest recovery in the first few
decades following harvest, but that this limitation switched to P
approximately 30-40 years after abandonment, consistent with field data on
N and P cycling from secondary tropical forest chronosequences. Simulated
biomass recovery agreed well with field data of biomass accumulation
following harvest (R2=0.80). Model results showed that if all biomass
remained on site following a severe disturbance such as blowdown, regrowth
approached pre-disturbance biomass in 80-90 years, and recovery was faster
following smaller disturbances such as selective logging. Field data from
regrowth on abandoned pastures were consistent with simulated losses of
nutrients in soil organic matter, particularly P. Following any forest
disturbance that involved the removal of nutrients (i.e., except
blowdown), forest regrowth produced reduced biomass relative to the
initial state as a result of nutrient loss through harvest, leaching
and/or sequestration by secondary minerals. Differences in nutrient
availability accounted for 49-94% of the variance in secondary forest
biomass C at a given stand age. Management lessons from this study are the
importance of strategies that help retain nutrients on site, recognizing
the role of coarse woody debris in immobilization and subsequent release
of nutrients, and the potential for nutrient additions to enhance biomass
growth and recovery in secondary tropical forests.