Canopy Trimming Experiment (CTE) at Luquillo

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Canopy Trimming Experiment (CTE) at Luquillo
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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).

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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).

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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

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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

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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.

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CTE Block Design
Link
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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

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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 NP

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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

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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!

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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

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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)

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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

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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