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Harvard Forest REU Symposium Abstract 2018
- Title: Scaling and Energy Partitioning Across Tree Sizes
- Author: Juan M Rodriguez (Brown University)
- Abstract:
In ecology, general patterns at many spatial and temporal scales have been noted and are important in numerous applications including the management of New England’s Forests. At the level of the community, Metabolic Scaling Theory (MST) has made rather accurate predictions regarding the distribution of size and rate of biomass accumulation in large woody plants. However, critics of this theory have noted that MST lacks the complexities of low light levels experienced by smaller seedlings and saplings in forests. By taking measurements of these smaller woody-plants and combining them with census data from Harvard-Forest’s MegaPlot, this work aims to provide insight on the individuals that should deviate most from this theory’s predictions, and increase the range of measured sizes by several orders of magnitude. Analyses of the data indicate that the distribution of abundance in plants follows the predicted framework relatively closely, although there are some deviations in the largest and smallest individuals. However, estimates of growth in the smallest individuals, do not conform to predictions made by Metabolic Scaling Theory. This suggests that other factors size-dependent factors may have a profound influence on the smallest individuals which brings more complexity than contained in MST’s simple framework. By looking at size-scales not normally considered by other works, these data provide insight on the complexities associated with fitting MST to real plant communities. These data work towards increasing our understanding of communities while also informing models predicting energy use, carbon sequestration, and future demographics of New England’s Forests.
- Research Category: Group Projects; Large Experiments and Permanent Plot Studies; Physiological Ecology, Population Dynamics, and Species Interactions
