Tropical understory herbaceous community responds more strongly to hurricane disturbance than to experimental warming

The effects of climate change on tropical forests may have global consequences due to the forests’ high biodiversity and major role in the global carbon cycle. In this study, we document the effects of experimental warming on the abundance and composition of a tropical forest floor herbaceous plant community in the Luquillo Experimental Forest, Puerto Rico. This study was conducted within Tropical Responses to Altered Climate Experiment (TRACE) plots, which use infrared heaters under free-air, open-field conditions, to warm understory vegetation and soils +4 °C above nearby control plots. Hurricanes Irma and María damaged the heating infrastructure in the second year of warming, therefore, the study included one pre-treatment year, one year of warming, and one year of hurricane response with no warming. We measured percent leaf cover of individual herbaceous species, fern population dynamics, and species richness and diversity within three warmed and three control plots.

Results show...

气候变化对热带森林的影响可能引发全球尺度的连锁后果，这源于热带森林极高的生物多样性及其在全球碳循环中的关键作用。本研究针对波多黎各卢奎略实验森林（Luquillo Experimental Forest）内的热带林地表草本植物群落，阐明实验性增温对其群落丰度与组成的影响。本实验依托热带气候改变响应实验（Tropical Responses to Altered Climate Experiment, TRACE）样地开展，该样地采用自由空气开放野外条件下部署的红外加热器，将林下植被与土壤的温度较邻近对照样地提升4℃。伊尔玛飓风（Hurricane Irma）与玛丽亚飓风（Hurricane María）在实验增温的第二年损毁了加热基础设施，因此本研究包含1个预处理年、1个增温年以及1个无增温的飓风响应阶段。研究人员在3个增温样地与3个对照样地中，测定了单个草本物种的叶盖度、蕨类种群动态，以及样地内的物种丰富度与多样性。研究结果显示……