期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2015
卷号：112
期号：49
页码：15125-15129
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1513417112
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：SignificanceExplaining the tree size structure of tropical forests is of crucial importance because other important forest attributes can be derived from this. The tree diameter distribution, for example, determines the amount of carbon stored in a forest. Here we present a simple and powerful approach based on stochastic geometry and tree allometries that can be used to predict tree diameter distributions. The search for simple principles underlying the complex architecture of ecological communities such as forests still challenges ecological theorists. We use tree diameter distributions--fundamental for deriving other forest attributes--to describe the structure of tropical forests. Here we argue that tree diameter distributions of natural tropical forests can be explained by stochastic packing of tree crowns representing a forest crown packing system: a method usually used in physics or chemistry. We demonstrate that tree diameter distributions emerge accurately from a surprisingly simple set of principles that include site-specific tree allometries, random placement of trees, competition for space, and mortality. The simple static model also successfully predicted the canopy structure, revealing that most trees in our two studied forests grow up to 30-50 m in height and that the highest packing density of about 60% is reached between the 25- and 40-m height layer. Our approach is an important step toward identifying a minimal set of processes responsible for generating the spatial structure of tropical forests.
关键词：tropical forest ; forest size structure ; stochastic geometry ; tree crown packing ; leaf area
