Abstract
Abstract. Large tropical trees store significant amounts of carbon in woody components and their distribution plays an important role in forest carbon stocks and dynamics. Here, we explore the properties of a new lidar-derived index, the large tree canopy area (LCA) defined as the area occupied by canopy above a reference height. We hypothesize that this simple measure of forest structure representing the crown area of large canopy trees could consistently explain the landscape variations in forest volume and aboveground biomass (AGB) across a range of climate and edaphic conditions. To test this hypothesis, we assembled a unique dataset of high-resolution airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) and ground inventory data in nine undisturbed old-growth Neotropical forests, of which four had plots large enough (1 ha) to calibrate our model. We found that the LCA for trees greater than 27 m (∼ 25–30 m) in height and at least 100 m2 crown size in a unit area (1 ha), explains more than 75 % of total forest volume variations, irrespective of the forest biogeographic conditions. When weighted by average wood density of the stand, LCA can be used as an unbiased estimator of AGB across sites (R2 = 0.78, RMSE = 46.02 Mg ha−1, bias = −0.63 Mg ha−1). Unlike other lidar-derived metrics with complex nonlinear relations to biomass, the relationship between LCA and AGB is linear and remains unique across forest types. A comparison with tree inventories across the study sites indicates that LCA correlates best with the crown area (or basal area) of trees with diameter greater than 50 cm. The spatial invariance of the LCA–AGB relationship across the Neotropics suggests a remarkable regularity of forest structure across the landscape and a new technique for systematic monitoring of large trees for their contribution to AGB and changes associated with selective logging, tree mortality and other types of tropical forest disturbance and dynamics.
Highlights
In humid tropical forests, tree canopies contribute disproportionately to the exchange of water and carbon with the atmosphere through photosynthesis (Goldstein et al, 1998; Santiago et al, 2004)
We found no relationship between topography and canopy height, which suggests that variability in forest structure may be due to other ecological and edaphic factors in each site
We introduced a simple structural metric that captures the proportion of area covered by large trees over the landscape (> 1 ha) and explained 78 % of the variation in average forest volume and biomass when weighted by wood density (WD) in four sites of old-growth Neotropical forests
Summary
In humid tropical forests, tree canopies contribute disproportionately to the exchange of water and carbon with the atmosphere through photosynthesis (Goldstein et al, 1998; Santiago et al, 2004). Canopies are rough interfaces formed by crowns of emergent and large trees, regularly disturbed by wind thrusts and gap dynamics. This structurally complex boundary layer is challenging for scaling of biogeochemical fluxes and modeling of vegetation dynamics (Baldocchi et al, 2003). V. Meyer et al.: Canopy area of large trees explains aboveground biomass variations
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