Gap formation favors the growth of understory plants and affects the decomposition process of plant debris inside and outside of gaps. Little information is available regarding how bioelement release from shrub litter is affected by gap formation during critical periods. The release of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) in the foliar litter of Fargesia nitida and Salix paraplesia in r...

Remote sensing provides critical information for broad scale assessments of wildlife habitat distribution and conservation. However, such efforts have been typically unable to incorporate information about vegetation structure, a variable important for explaining the distribution of many wildlife species. We evaluated the consequences of incorporating remotely sensed information about horizonta...

Hemispherical photography (HP), implemented with cameras equipped with "fisheye" lenses, is a widely used method for describing forest canopies and light regimes. A promising technological advance is the availability of low-cost fisheye lenses for smartphone cameras. However, smartphone camera sensors cannot record a full hemisphere. We investigate whether smartphone HP is a cheaper and faster ...

The total phenol content in decomposing litter not only acts as a crucial litter quality indicator, but is also closely related to litter humification due to its tight absorption to clay particles. However, limited attention has been focused on the total phenol dynamics in foliar litter in relation to forest gaps. Here, the foliar litter of six representative tree species was incubated on the f...

Patterns of buttress formation in tropical trees vary greatly within and among species. In Kibale National Park, Uganda, some form of a buttress was found on 23% of the 78 species (1785 trees) sampled from a variety of distantly related families. Large differences in buttress formation were documented within a single family and even within the same genus. Previous studies have suggested that bu...

a Joint Remote Sensing Research Program, School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia b Remote Sensing Centre, Science Delivery, Department of Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts, 41 Boggo Road, QLD 4102, Australia c Department of Geography and NERC National Centre for Earth Observation University Colleg...

Canopy gaps express the time-integrated effects of tree failure and mortality as well as regrowth and succession in tropical forests. Quantifying the size and spatial distribution of canopy gaps is requisite to modeling forest functional processes ranging from carbon fluxes to species interactions and biological diversity. Using high-resolution airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), we m...

Questions: Do large, old Sequoiadondron giganteum trees respond to the creation of adjacent canopy gaps? Do other co-occurring tree species and younger S. giganteum adjacent to gaps also respond? What are the likely factors affecting growth responses? Location: Mixed-conifer forests of the southern Sierra Nevada, California, USA. Methods: We measured the growth response of large, old S. gigante...

ABSTR;I( 7.-M1e found mol e green tree frogs ( Hjla izntv-tv~) in canopv gaps than in closed canopy forest. Of the 331 peen tree flogs obtei-ced, 58% were in canopv gaps. Likewise, higher numbers and blomds5es of insects were cdptured 111 the open gap l~abitat Flies wele the most commonlv collected insect group accctunting for 54% of the total capture. These data suggest that one reason greeri ...

Functional biogeography may bridge a gap between field-based biodiversity information and satellite-based Earth system studies, thereby supporting conservation plans to protect more species and their contributions to ecosystem functioning. We used airborne laser-guided imaging spectroscopy with environmental modeling to derive large-scale, multivariate forest canopy functional trait maps of the...