Data from: Lianas associated with continued forest biomass losses following large-scale disturbances

Lianas are important to rainforest ecosystems but often impede tree growth
and increase tree mortality and stem damage after disturbances that favour
their growth. Understanding how lianas affect biomass recovery and rates
of carbon sequestration following disturbance is therefore of crucial
importance. In this study, we determine how a tropical forest recovers
biomass following a large-scale disturbance and test how this varies with
liana dominance and stem damage. We use remote sensing methods to develop
a model, validated by field data from 40 20 m x 20 m vegetation plots, to
measure change in tree above-ground biomass eight years after Tropical
Cyclone Yasi damaged logged forests in the Australian Wet Tropics. We
related tree biomass changes to field measures of current liana dominance
over trees, expressed as liana: tree basal area ratio, and assessed how
these measures related to tree stem damage. Biomass declined in 34 of the
40 plots during the eight years post-disturbance, with loss rates and
proportions of damaged tree stems increasing with the liana: tree ratio.
From spatial upscaling, we found a net loss in biomass across the study
landscape over the same period. Our results show that, following
disturbances, lianas not only limit tree biomass recovery but are also
associated with further biomass declines, most likely through their
contribution to stem damage and delayed mortality. Furthermore, our
finding of net biomass loss across the landscape since the cyclone shows
that, post-disturbance, rainforests can act as a carbon source with
consequences for the global carbon sink.