We investigated the effects of land-use changes on soil carbon storage and soil CO2 flux by comparing soils from mature cloud forest and 31-year-old secondary forest, both in the Santa Elena Forest Reserve, a municipallyowned reserve at an elevation of 1600 to 1700 m near the town of Monteverde, and a clear-cut pasture near the reserve. Soils in the mature forest exhibit only weak horizonation ...

While tropical montane cloud forests (TMCF) provide critical hydrological services to downstream regions throughout much of the humid tropics, catchment hydrology and impacts associated with forest conversion in these ecosystems remain poorly understood. Here, we compare the annual, seasonal and event-scale streamflow patterns and runoff generation processes of three neighbouring headwater catc...

Many studies have identified drivers of deforestation throughout the tropics and, in most cases, have recognised differences in the level of threat. However, only a few have also looked at the temporal and spatial dynamics by which those drivers act, which is critical for assessing the conservation of biodiversity as well as for landscape planning. In this study, we analyse land cover change be...

Intensive mechanized agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon grew by >3.6 million hectares (ha) during 2001-2004. Whether this cropland expansion resulted from intensified use of land previously cleared for cattle ranching or new deforestation has not been quantified and has major implications for future deforestation dynamics, carbon fluxes, forest fragmentation, and other ecosystem services. We c...

Stigmacoccus garmilleri Foldi (Hemiptera: Margarodidae) is an ecologically important honeydew-producing scale insect associated with oak trees (Quercus spp.) in highland forests of Veracruz, Mexico. The honeydew exudates of S. garmilleri serve as a significant nutrient source to many species of birds, insects, and sooty molds. Oak trees found in the forest interior, forest edge, and those scatt...

Early-successional vegetation is often a major factor that limits recovery of tropical forest in abandoned pastures by outcompeting seedlings of forest trees. The goal of this study was to compare the effects of aboveand below-ground competition of pasture grasses and shrubs on the growth of tree seedlings in abandoned tropical pasture in Costa Rica. Seedlings of Calophyllum brasiliense were pl...

Changes of land use/land cover have a significant impact on runoff by altering the surface evaporation, soil moisture conditions and the amount of trapped ground cover, which directly impact the sustainable development of the watershed ecology. In this paper, based on remote sensing images, we simulate runoff of land-use changes of different slopes using GIS technology and SWAT model in Erhai w...