With support from the HSBC Climate Partnership
Smithsonian study effect of lianas on forest and climate change
(Machine translation by Google)
Those who have seen a Tarzan movie know that the vines - woody climbing plants - are a feature in tropical forests. In recent years, scientists have speculated that lianas are becoming more common in tropical forests. This belief is based only on anecdotal observations made by scientists in the field, but so far there have been no quantitative data to check printing.
With support from the HSBC Climate Partnership, a group of 27 scientists from different countries, proposed to test the hypothesis that lianas are becoming more common as their habitat becomes drier and the results have just been published in May in Journal Biotropica. The scientists studied the statistics of lianas in 24 different forest sites in the tropics of the New and
The data showed that the density of lianas increases significantly if rainfall decreases and the dry seasons grow longer.
But what will the impact of the increase in the density of lianas in the forest? One of the goals of the Smithsonian as part of the HSBC Climate Partnership is to develop predictive models that help us to predict environmental changes.
A second study related to the Smithsonian, published in the scientific journal Ecology Letters, describes the results of an experiment eight years where investigators found that removing the vines, there was a 55% increase in tree growth, 46 % in seed germination and 65% in local species diversity. We found that lianas are particularly harmful to those species of shade-tolerant trees.
Therefore, it seems that as forests respond to dry weather trends, the increase in the density of the vines will be a burden for the trees that will suppress growth and species diversity.
The Smithsonian and collaborating scientists are grateful to HSBC and the HSBC Climate Partnership for the support of this research will help us clarify the history of how forests respond to climate change.
El Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales, con sede en ciudad de Panamá, Panamá, es una unidad de la Institución Smithsonian en
Directora de Información Pública y Medios de Comunicación
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Email: alvaradom@si.edu
Tel: (507) 212-8169; (507) 212-8283; (507) 212-8023
Fax: (507) 212-8296
www.stri.org
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