Research Areas:
Plant responses to variation in nutrient supply
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Together with Robert John (ATREE),
Kyle Harms (Louisiana State University), and
Joe Yavitt (Cornell University)
and collaborators from the Center for Tropical Forest Science network we have created maps of soil nutrient availability
for a set of ten large (25-50 ha) forest dynamics plots.
These large-scale, high resolution soils maps provide an unprecedented
opportunity to explore how edaphic site conditions affect forest growth and
structure, and contribute to the maintenance of diversity through
resource-based niche partitioning.
Our soil sampling and analysis protocol for this project can be obtained from Kyle's website here. Datasets (soil maps and block estimates of soil nutrient concentrations for individual quadrats in the BCI 50 ha forest dynamics plot) can be obtained from the CTFS web site here. Our first, and long-awaited publication from this project can be downloaded from this link. We show that 30-40 % of tree species in the three neotropical plot sites we have worked at (Barro Colorado Island, Panama; La Planada, Colombia; Yasuni, Ecuador) have distribution patterns that are significantly associated with one or more soil nutrient variables. Our current work on this project is examining performance variation in tree populations across nutrient concentration gradients, soil fertility effects on demographic variability among the CTFS plots and species associations with resource ratios. Here are a few cool-looking maps from our neotropical sites: Top: Extractable aluminium (mg/Kg) Barro Colorado Island plot (scale 1000 m x 500 m)Middle: Extractable aluminum (mg/kg) Yasuni 50 ha plot (scale 1000 x 500 m) Bottom: Extractable potassium (mg/kg) La Planada 25 ha plot (scale 500 x 500 m) |
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| Dept. of Plant Biology | School of Integrative Biology |
| Program in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology | University of Illinois |
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Created 10/29/03 |