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Contrasted allometries between stem diameter, crown area, and tree height in five tropical biogeographic areas

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Across five biogeographic areas, DBH-CA allometry was characterized by inter-site homogeneity and intra-site heterogeneity, whereas the reverse was observed for DBH-H allometry.

Abstract

Tree crowns play a central role in stand dynamics. Remotely sensed canopy images have been shown to allow inferring stand structure and biomass which suggests that allometric scaling between stems and crowns may be tight, although insufficiently investigated to date. Here, we report the first broad-scale assessment of stem vs. crown scaling exponents using measurements of bole diameter (DBH), total height (H), and crown area (CA) made on 4148 trees belonging to 538 species in five biogeographic areas across the wet tropics. Allometries were fitted with power functions using ordinary least-squares regressions on log-transformed data. The inter-site variability and intra-site (sub-canopy vs. canopy trees) variability of the allometries were evaluated by comparing the scaling exponents. Our results indicated that, in contrast to both DBH-H and H-CA allometries, DBH-CA allometry shows no significant inter-site variation. This fairly invariant scaling calls for increased effort in documenting crown sizes as part of tree morphology. Stability in DBH-CA allometry, indeed, suggests that some universal constraints are sufficiently pervasive to restrict the exponent variation to a narrow range. In addition, our results point to inverse changes in the scaling exponent of the DBH-CA vs. DBH-H allometries when shifting from sub-canopy to canopy trees, suggesting a change in carbon allocation when a tree reaches direct light. These results pave the way for further advances in our understanding of niche partitioning in tree species, tropical forest dynamics, and to estimate AGB in tropical forests from remotely sensed images.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the Direction for Economic and Environmental Development (DDEE) of the North Province of New Caledonia. Data acquisition for IRD plots (data from Africa) was supported by Eramet, IRD-PPR FTH-AC, the World Bank, WWF, EIT-Climate KIC, the African Development Bank, and COMIFAC. We thank the Institut Agronomique néo-Calédonien (IAC) for co-funding E. Blanchard’s Ph.D. We are grateful to the many field workers, technicians, engineers, and researchers who contributed to the long-term monitoring of the plots used in the analyses. We also thank Santiago Trueba-Sanchez (IRD) and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Agronomique Néo-Calédonien (IAC), Diversité Biologique et Fonctionnelle des Écosystèmes terrestres, Laboratoire de Botanique et d’Écologie Végétale Appliquées, BP A5, 98848, Noumea, New Caledonia

    Elodie Blanchard, Philippe Birnbaum, Thomas Ibanez, Thomas Boutreux, Robin Pouteau & Hervé Vandrot

  2. Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique Pour le Développement (CIRAD), UMR 51-AMAP, Boulevard de la Lironde, TA A-51/PS2, 34398, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Philippe Birnbaum

  3. Institut de Recherche Pour le Développement (IRD), UMR AMAP, Boulevard de la Lironde, TA A-51/PS2, 34398, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Cécile Antin, Pierre Ploton, Grégoire Vincent, Nicolas Barbier, Vincent Droissart, Nicolas Texier & Pierre Couteron

  4. Institut de Recherche Pour le Développement (IRD), BP A5, 98848, Nouméa, New Caledonia

    Vanessa Hequet

  5. Laboratoire de Botanique Systématique et d’Ecologie, Département des Sciences Biologiques, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Université de Yaoundé I, BP 047, Yaoundé, Cameroon

    Vincent Droissart, Bonaventure Sonké, Nicolas Texier, Narcisse Guy Kamdem, Donatien Zebaze & Moses Libalah

Authors
  1. Elodie Blanchard
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  2. Philippe Birnbaum
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elodie Blanchard.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Communicated by E. Beck.

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Blanchard, E., Birnbaum, P., Ibanez, T. et al. Contrasted allometries between stem diameter, crown area, and tree height in five tropical biogeographic areas. Trees 30, 1953–1968 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00468-016-1424-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00468-016-1424-3

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