SGER: Large-scale Ecology of a Diverse Tropical Rain Forest Landscape: a Multidisciplinary Proposal to Capitalize on a Unique Research Opportunity

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This will use Small Foot Print Light Detection and Ranging (SF-LIDAR) to measure canopy structure in three dimensions at high resolution at La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica. The data collected are at such high resolution that individual tree canopies can be readily identified. The data can be used to estimate stand basal area, aboveground biomass, leaf area index, light transmittance, canopy and individual tree heights, and stem densities. This is a relatively new technology that has, thus far, been used in mainly in temperate forest sites, but rarely in tropical forests. As one of the most intensively studied tropical forests in the world, there are several ongoing projects at La Selva, including two NSF funded projects directed at tree demography and forest succession following agricultural abandonment that will be able to take advantage of access to the SF-LIDAR data. Projects funded by other federal agencies and private organizations are directed at such topics as forest canopy structure and physiology, biodiversity monitoring of selected forest taxa, carbon dynamics, and landscape-scale ecological and demographic studies of rain forest trees. Many of these studies are being conducted by overlapping groups of scientists and are thus, highly integrated and interdisciplinary.