How many trees and samples are adequate for estimating wood-specific gravity across different tropical forests?
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
How many trees and samples are adequate for estimating wood‑specific gravity across different tropical forests? Kalill José Viana da Páscoa1 · Lucas Rezende Gomide1 · David Yue Phin Tng2 · José Roberto Soares Scolforo1 · Antônio Carlos Ferraz Filho3 · José Márcio de Mello1 Received: 11 February 2019 / Accepted: 20 June 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Key message A random sampling between 30 and 50 trees is sufficient for forest-level wood density estimates. Abstract Wood density (WD) is a key trait used to determine forest biomass and carbon stocks, but determining WD accurately is logistically demanding and expensive. These challenges also hamper comparisons across studies and different forest types, because sampling intensity within forests and within individual trees often vary across studies. We aimed to evaluate the relationship between WD and forest type using a standardized protocol and to simulate the number of samples required to obtain a representative estimation of WD of trees belonging to different tropical vegetation types representing an increasing order of aridity: rain forest, semideciduous forest, evergreen dry forest, savannah woodland, and seasonally deciduous forest. We measured WD at five vertical profiles along the trunks of 1,671 trees representing 349 species. Using bootstrapping analyses, we modeled WD as a function of the different combinations of samples extracted at the five sampling heights and evaluated the models with the best performance. The lowest and highest mean WD values were found in rain forest and seasonally deciduous forests, respectively, in line with the correspondingly low and high aridity of these habitats. Depending on forest type, sampling approximately 30–60 trees is sufficient for stabilizing the coefficient of variation in WD. Additionally, using samples collected at 25% and 50% height from the base along the vertical profile of each tree is adequate for WD estimations. These insights could be used to develop less destructive methodologies for wood density sampling, and, thus, help to reduce costs of carbon stock inventories in tropical forests. Keywords Native forest · Forest biomass · Sampling intensity · Bootstrap
Introduction
Communicated by Gärtner. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00468-020-02007-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Kalill José Viana da Páscoa [email protected] 1
Department of Forestry Sciences, Laboratory of Studies and Projects in Forest Management, Federal University of Lavras, Postal Box 3037, Lavras, MG CEP 37200‑900, Brazil
2
The School for Field Studies Australia, 2710 Gillies Highway, Yungaburra, QLD 4872, Australia
3
Federal University of Piauí, Campus Professora Cinobelina Elvas, BR 135, Km 3, Bom Jesus, PI CEP 64900‑000, Brazil
Wood density (WD) plays a significant role in the life‐history variation of trees and is considered an important tr
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