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:

• 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