The conservation of charismatic and functionally important large species is becoming increasingly difficult. Anthropogenic pressures continue to squeeze available habitat and force animals into degraded and disturbed areas. Ensuring the long-term survival of these species requires a well-developed understanding of how animals use these new landscapes to inform conservation and habitat restorati...

Management activities alter the structure of many tropical forest stands which can be expected to influence the magnitude of canopy water fluxes. The objectives of this study were to determine throughfall, stemflow and rainfall interception in differently managed forest stands, and to relate the observed pattern of rainfall partitioning to stand structural characteristics. The study was conduct...

The recent development of operational small unmanned aerial systems (UASs) opens the door for their extensive use in forest mapping, as both the spatial and temporal resolution of UAS imagery better suit local-scale investigation than traditional remote sensing tools. This article focuses on the use of combined photogrammetry and “Structure from Motion” approaches in order to model the forest c...

T ropical deforestation is occurring at unprecedented rates, contributing as much as a fifth of annual global carbon emissions and imparting significant impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem function, livelihoods, and climate (1–3). Selective logging, removal of 1–25 canopy trees per hectare with associated levels of harvesting damage, is predicted to greatly exceed tropical deforestation in exten...

We sought to quantify changes in tree species composition, forest structure and aboveground forest biomass (AGB) over 76 years (1930-2006) in the deciduous Black Rock Forest in southeastern New York, USA. We used data from periodic forest inventories, published floras and a set of eight long-term plots, along with species-specific allometric equations to estimate AGB and carbon content. Between...

Coarse woody debris (CWD) and canopy gaps are thought to be important structural components that influence forest ecosystem processes, yet few studies have assessed whether these features interact to influence decay dynamics, and we know of none that does so under controlled experimental canopy gap conditions. By manipulating forest structure to create canopy openings, we tested whether canopy ...

* Documentation of the degree and direction of effects of ozone on transpiration of canopies of mature forest trees is critically needed to model ozone effects on forest water use and growth in a warmer future climate. * Patterns of sap flow in stems and soil moisture in the rooting zones of mature trees, coupled with late-season streamflow in three forested watersheds in east Tennessee, USA, w...

Most forest birds include arthropods in their diet, sometimes specializing on arthropods that consume plant foliage. Experimental tests of whether bird predation on arthropods can reduce plant damage, however, are few and restricted to relatively low-diversity systems. Here, we describe an experimental test in a diverse tropical forest of whether birds indirectly defend foliage from arthropod h...

Forest production depends on CO2 assimilation, but is rarely solely a function of leaf-level photosynthesis. Crown characteristics may affect tree growth by altering light interception and photosynthesis at canopy level. Strong light gradients are present in forest canopies, which often result in parallel changes in leaf morphology and leaf nitrogen for efficient use of light in photosynthetic ...

Plant-frugivore networks play a key role in the regeneration of sub-tropical forest ecosystems. However, information about the impact of habitat characteristics on plant-frugivore networks in fragmented forests is scarce. We investigated the importance of fruit abundance, fruiting plant species richness and canopy cover within habitat fragments for the structure and robustness of plant-frugivor...