From: smith-una@MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU (Una Smith)
Newsgroups: bionet.biology.tropical
Subject: 50 hectare forest plots
Keywords: FRIM Pasoh Forest Reserve STRI Barro Colorado Island
Date: 11 Jan 93 21:19:37 GMT
Organization: Yale University Science & Engineering UNIX(tm), New Haven, CT 06520-2158
NNTP-Posting-Host: minerva.cis.yale.edu

I have added my own comments, offset, to a note sent to me via e-mail
recently by Fangliang He.  Fangliang's note is posted here with permission.

	Una


From: hefa@ere.umontreal.ca (He Fangliang)

Hi, Dr. Smith, Thanks for your interesting in tropical rain forest.
I have been studying for Ph.D. at Universite de Montreal since 1991
and is supposed to finish the study next December. My thesis is
about tropical rain forest of Malaysia (The title is Patch
Development and Their Spatio-temporal Dynamics: An approach to
understand tropical rain forest). The data set is from Havard Inst.
for International Development. They have surveyed a 50-ha plot in
the Pasoh Forest Reserve of Malaysia. The sampling scheme is almost
the same as they did in Barron Colorado Island forest.

	The 50 hectare plot at Pasoh was established by the Forestry
	Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM) with the support of
	Peter Ashton at Harvard (now head of their Inst. for Internat.
	Dev.) and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI).
	STRI scientists Stephen Hubbell and Robin Foster established
	the first 50 hectare plot on Barro Colorado Island in 1980,
	and the Pasoh plot was set up in 1985 using an identical 
	coordinate system and census criteria.

	The BCI plot has approximately 250,000 stems with diameter
	at breast height (DBH) of at least 1 cm, representing 300
	species.  Each stem has a permanent metal identification tag,
	and a data base of census information for each tree has been
	kept since establishment of the plot, with complete recensus
	records for 1985 and 1990.  I was data base manager for the
	BCI plot from 1988 through mid-1990.

	At the time that I was involved with the BCI plot, James 
	LaFrankie, who earned his PhD at Harvard, was the plot 
	administrator and data base manager for the Pasoh plot.
	Jim's initial results from the Pasoh plot revealed that 
	some 330,000 stems representing 900 species.  Thus, the
	Pasoh plot had significantly more stems than the BCI plot
	(with very few forest giants, however), and three times the
	species diversity of the BCI plot.  Trees at Pasoh were
	thinner and taller than at BCI, and Jim reported that the 
	Pasoh plot had relatively few lianas or treefalls, compared
	to the BCI plot.

My interesting is the spatial patterning of the tropical forest both
at population level and community level.  Drs. Hubbell and Foster
et al. have done excellent in this area, but there is still a lot
of room to put something. For instance, in which way and to what
extent that the abiotic and biotic factors are responsibel for the 
seeing spatial pattern of a species in the study area? This
question can be answered by some quantitative methods such as
canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) and it will certainly serve
to better understand if the forest is equilibrium or not... . I am
preparing a paper in this moment for this problem based on
diversity of the Pasoh forest, relating to topological data
(environment) and space (no biotic factors because diversity is
calcualted to include all the species possible). The result is
interesting and surprising. There is no influnce for the spatial
pattern of diversity from environment. This paper is only one
chapter of my thesis.  

	What abiotic measures of environment do you have?  Soil type,
	nutrient levels?  I know that the survey data for Pasoh gave
	topological information such as elevation, slope, and aspect,
	but if I recall correctly the entire elevational range was no
	more than 100 meters and most of the plot was flat, whith a 
	lower flat area in the south-west quadrant and another largely
	flat area in the east half.  100 meters is a fair amount of
	change over a plot that is 500 meters north-south by 1000 meters
	east-west, but may or may not affect microsite habitats.  What
	are the actual figures?  Do you have any rainfall data for
	different areas within the plot, any evidence that what relief
	there is in the topology contributes to other abiotic patterns?

	The paper you describe sounds like a statistical exploration of
	the data base of all 330,000 tree stem coordinates and species
	codes.  On the face of it that is a logical strategy, but I
	question whether you might be missing the forest for the trees.
	Considering that there are, by my sketchy calculations, only
	370 stems per species represented in the plot data base, and I
	know that the most abundant species there had no more than a few
	thousand stems, I would not expect any spatial pattern to emerge
	from an analysis of the full data base.  So I do not find your
	result as stated either interesting or surprising.

	What about your topological data?  Do you find any patterns there?
	Again, I would not expect to find any overall trends, but it would
	be interesting if there were associations between certain species
	or groups of species and aspects of the terrain. 

	What was interesting to me in the Pasoh plot data were the apparent
	patterns of clumping of various species of trees.  Some appeared
	to occur mainly on slopes, some on the lower flat areas (where,
	according to Jim, wild pigs were known to forage routinely), and
	some on the upper areas.  I think it would be appropriate to look
	for correlations between these individual species patterns and the
	natural histories of those species (i.e., pollinator regimes, 
	breeding system, seed predators/dispersers, phenology, age
	structure, etc.).  In my opinion, the greatest value of the 50 ha
	plot projects is not the large-scale, huge statistical analysis
	that they afford, but the enormous reservoir of ancillary data
	that they can provide to smaller, individual research projects.
	In this respect the 50 hectare plot data bases (and the plots 
	themselves) have been grossly under-utilized.

	Examples of research efforts that make good use of plot data from
	the BCI and Pasoh plots include published work by Darlyne Murawski
	and James Hamrick et al. on breeding systems of Central American
	canopy species, and recent PhD work by Sean Thomas at Harvard on
	the phenology of canopy trees at the Pasoh plot.  I am sure there
	are others who have begun work since I left the project.


I am eager to communicate with anyone who is interested in tropical
rain forest. The lab I am studying in is excellent in theoretical
and statistic ecology and also very diverse in different
interestings. Only I who study vegetation, needless to tropical
forest. Any connection with a vegetation scientist or ecologist
having tropical experience is really precious. From publications
and the answers to my posting there are quite a dozen of tropical
ecologists who are active. It will be nice idea as proposed by Dr.
Hanna Tuomisto to have a list of the persons who are interested in
tropical rainforest.

	All we need is someone to volunteer to maintain the list.  You?
	There are more than enough of us to sustain discussions on a
	number of topics, if the spirit moves   us.
	
BY the way, May I know more information about your and your
research group's interestings in tropical rain forest?
Thanks and have a happy New Year.
Sincerely, Mr. Fangliang He

	Sure, and thanks!

	I recently completed a project on a mid-canopy palm found in
	Peruvian Amazonia, with relatives throughout the neotropics.
	At my Peruvian site, juveniles of this species were clumped,
	but a very similar species in French Guiana showed no such 
	pattern.  Being a large palm, this species' seeds are dispersed
	by mammals, and the differential results from Peru and French
	Guiana invite the question of whether the present mammal
	communities are also different, and whether these differences
	are due to human or other environmental impacts.  The question
	I have in mind now is what happens to a forest when the big cats
	have been hunted out and there are too many mammals capable of
	dispersing (or eating) big seeds, or when all the mammals are
	gone and there are none left to disperse the big seeds that are
	disproportionately produced by big trees (and lianas)?

	I am no longer doing any field work, Fangliang.  Instead, I am
	working at my own PhD on various aspects of plant evolution, in
	a molecular lab and using fossil collections.

	Una Smith
-- 

      Una Smith      Biology Department       smith-una@yale.edu
                     Yale University
                     New Haven, CT  06511