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The Effects Of Tree Plantations And Land Use On Natural Regeneration Of Woody Plants In The Tropics: Diversity, Species Composition, Successional Dynamics, And Functional Traits, John Benjamin Longworth

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

As anthropogenic forests become more common in the tropics, there is a greater need to understand the factors that impact forest succession. I used censuses of woody plants in successional forests to study the effects of prior land use and tree plantations on species composition and richness. First, I tested the hypothesis that communities originating from different land uses were converging in species composition over time. I compared species composition using the Chao-Jaccard similarity index. I observed shifts in the dominant species during the first 30 years of succession, but not convergence of species composition in sites with different land-use …