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Relationships among net primary productivity, nutrients and climate in tropical rain forest: a pan-tropical analysis

  1. Cory C. Cleveland1,*,
  2. Alan R. Townsend2,
  3. Philip Taylor3,
  4. Silvia Alvarez-Clare4,
  5. Mercedes M. C. Bustamante5,
  6. George Chuyong6,
  7. Solomon Z. Dobrowski7,
  8. Pauline Grierson8,
  9. Kyle E. Harms9,
  10. Benjamin Z. Houlton10,
  11. Alison Marklein10,
  12. William Parton11,
  13. Stephen Porder12,
  14. Sasha C. Reed13,
  15. Carlos A. Sierra14,
  16. Whendee L. Silver15,
  17. Edmund V. J. Tanner16,
  18. William R. Wieder3

Article first published online: 12 JUL 2011

DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01658.x

Issue

Ecology Letters

Ecology Letters

Volume 14, Issue 9, pages 939–947, September 2011

Additional Information

How to Cite

Cleveland, C. C., Townsend, A. R., Taylor, P., Alvarez-Clare, S., Bustamante, M. M. C., Chuyong, G., Dobrowski, S. Z., Grierson, P., Harms, K. E., Houlton, B. Z., Marklein, A., Parton, W., Porder, S., Reed, S. C., Sierra, C. A., Silver, W. L., Tanner, E. V. J. and Wieder, W. R. (2011), Relationships among net primary productivity, nutrients and climate in tropical rain forest: a pan-tropical analysis. Ecology Letters, 14: 939–947. doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01658.x

Author Information

  1. 1

    Department of Ecosystem and Conservation Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, USA

  2. 2

    Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies Program and INSTAAR, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA

  3. 3

    Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and INSTAAR, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA

  4. 4

    Department of Biology & School of Natural Resources & Environment, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA

  5. 5

    Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade de Brasilia, Brasilia-DF, Brazil

  6. 6

    Department of Plant and Animal Sciences, University of Buea, POB 63, Buea, Cameroon

  7. 7

    Department of Forest Management, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, USA

  8. 8

    School of Plant Biology M090, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6016, Australia

  9. 9

    Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA; and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Republic of Panama

  10. 10

    Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA

  11. 11

    Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523–1499, USA

  12. 12

    Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA

  13. 13

    U.S. Geological Survey, Southwest Biological Science Center, 2290 S.W. Resource Blvd., Moab, UT 84532, USA

  14. 14

    Department of Biological Processes, Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry, 07745 Jena, Germany

  15. 15

    Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

  16. 16

    Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EA, UK

*E-mail: cory.cleveland@umontana.edu

Publication History

  1. Issue published online: 7 AUG 2011
  2. Article first published online: 12 JUL 2011
  3. Editor, David Hooper Manuscript received 8 June 2011 Manuscript accepted 15 June 2011
Corrected by:

ERRATA: Relationships among net primary productivity, nutrients and climate in tropical rain forest: a pan-tropical analysis

Vol. 14, Issue 12, 1313–1317, Article first published online: 8 NOV 2011

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Keywords:

  • Carbon cycle;
  • climate;
  • decomposition;
  • meta-analysis;
  • nitrogen;
  • nutrient limitation;
  • phosphorus;
  • primary production;
  • tropical forest

Ecology Letters (2011) 14: 939–947

Abstract

Tropical rain forests play a dominant role in global biosphere-atmosphere CO2 exchange. Although climate and nutrient availability regulate net primary production (NPP) and decomposition in all terrestrial ecosystems, the nature and extent of such controls in tropical forests remain poorly resolved. We conducted a meta-analysis of carbon-nutrient-climate relationships in 113 sites across the tropical forest biome. Our analyses showed that mean annual temperature was the strongest predictor of aboveground NPP (ANPP) across all tropical forests, but this relationship was driven by distinct temperature differences between upland and lowland forests. Within lowland forests (< 1000 m), a regression tree analysis revealed that foliar and soil-based measurements of phosphorus (P) were the only variables that explained a significant proportion of the variation in ANPP, although the relationships were weak. However, foliar P, foliar nitrogen (N), litter decomposition rate (k), soil N and soil respiration were all directly related with total surface (0–10 cm) soil P concentrations. Our analysis provides some evidence that P availability regulates NPP and other ecosystem processes in lowland tropical forests, but more importantly, underscores the need for a series of large-scale nutrient manipulations – especially in lowland forests – to elucidate the most important nutrient interactions and controls.

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