Transcript Canopy Trimming Experiment (CTE) at Luquillo

Canopy Trimming Experiment
(CTE) at Luquillo
CTE Scientific Basis
• A result of the monitoring activities
• To simulate and increase the frequency of
hurricanes
• Hypothesis: changes to microclimate (air
temperature, soil moisture, light) and detritus
(carbon and nutrients) drive ecosystem changes
(productivity, species composition, storage and
export of Carbon and nutrients).
CTE Scientific Basis
• Hypothesis: changes to
microclimate (air
temperature, soil moisture,
light) and detritus (carbon
and nutrients) drive
ecosystem changes
(productivity, species
composition, storage and
export of Carbon and
nutrients).
CTE Scientific Basis
• Strong Hurricanes reposition
plant materials from the
canopy forest floor
increasing the levels of
detritus on the ground
• Light level, soil moisture, and
temperature simultaneously
increase after disturbance
and may interact with the
pulse of ditritus to affect
subsequent community and
ecosystem changes
CTE Design
• A long-term experiment
• Two parts:
– a forest canopy manipulation
– specific manipulation of the biota.
• Two stages of measurements:
– Pre-treatment
– Post-treatment
CTE Design
• the forest canopy will be trimmed every six
years and the material (branches, leaves)
will be deposited onto the forest floor to
simulate hurricane damage.
CTE Block Design
Link
CTE Data
Pre-treatment: (the current phase of the experiment):
• Worms, Bacteria & Fungi prelim data.: weights of
leaves by species, total weights of wood, fruits and
flowers and miscelaneous
• Microbial biomass prelim data: weights of
fumigated, non-fumigated, wet and dry soil,
calculated value of biomass (?)
• Seedlings: species, dbh, height
• Meteorological: LAI/Light
CTE Data
Pre-treatment: (the current phase of the experiment):
• Litterfall : new palm fronds, leaves, wood,
miscelaneous, and fruits,seeds,flower
• Others: arthropods prelim data, Soil solution N&P
CTE Data
Post Treatment measurements:
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All of the above but some taken less frequently
Root production &turnover
Green Litter Decomp.
Soil's Trace Gases
Arthropods
Objectives for this workshop
• Preliminary synthesis data base design
– Pre-CTE litterfall data comparison (can it be
done?)
– Pre-treatment data merge
– Foresee data design of pos-treatment
measurements
• Be able to merge or query them all!
IM and CTE
• Ecological Research process: Study Design:
IM participation in the design stage common variables nonmenclature
• Ecological Research process: Field work:
assist with the compilation and sharing of
protocols (Web Provate page). Prepare Data
Entry sheets
IM and CTE
• Ecological Research process: Data Entry and
Verification – IM enters data and do QC process
• Ecological Research process: Data analysis – this
workshop is meant to facilitate this stage
• Ecological Research process: Data sharing within
the group – private Web page where they can
deposit and share their data and metadata
(http://luq.lternet.edu/data/CTE)
IM and CTE
• Ecological Research processess: Journal
pub, Data Archive, and mining
– Online access to scientific citations
(http://luq.lternet.edu/publicatons)
– Data documentation started at the first stage
– Community common variables, date, plot,
subplot format
CTE Bottlenecks
• Administrative
• Some scientists hoarding data (subtle but
still exist)
• Metadata completion: it has been broken
down in stages but accessibility of some
scientists slows the process down
Project coordinator: facilitates sharing and
closely and files data and metadata with IM