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Low rates of background canopy-gap disturbance in a seasonally dry forest in the Yucatan Peninsula with a history of fires and hurricanes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2001

MATTHEW B. DICKINSON ,
SHARON M. HERMANN  and
DENNIS F. WHIGHAM
MATTHEW B. DICKINSON
Affiliation:
Department of Biological Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA, 32306 Present address: Kananaskis Field Stations and Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2N 1N4. Email: mdickins@acs.ucalgary.ca
SHARON M. HERMANN
Affiliation:
Tall Timbers Research Station, 13093 Henry Beadle Drive, Tallahassee, Florida, USA, 32312
DENNIS F. WHIGHAM
Affiliation:
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, P.O. Box 28, Edgewater, Maryland, USA, 21037
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Abstract

Isolated canopy gaps involving one to several trees occur continuously and frequently in many moist and wet neotropical forests (sensu Holdridge et al.1971), shaping tree community structure through a shifting mosaic of patches of high resource availability for small and young trees (Denslow 1980). Though there are few relevant data (Jans et al. 1993), forests with significant seasonal drought are expected to have lower rates of canopy-gap formation (gaps ha-1 γ-1), smaller gap sizes, and, thus, lower rates of canopy disturbance (%γ-1, see review in Whigham et al. 1999). At the extreme, very dry tropical forests do not appear to fit the gap-phase dynamics concept (Swaine et al. 1990).

Keywords

basal rotmodes of gap formationsnappingstanding mortalityuprooting
Type
Brief Report
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 17 , Issue 6 , November 2001 , pp. 895 - 902
Copyright
2001 Cambridge University Press

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