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Updated and accurate maps of tropical forests and industrial plantations, like rubber plantations, are essential for understanding carbon cycle and optimal forest management practices, but existing optical-imagery-based efforts are greatly limited by frequent cloud cover. Here we explored the potential utility of integrating 25-m cloud-free Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) mosaic product and multi-temporal Landsat images to map forests and rubber plantations in Hainan Island, China. Based on structure information detected by PALSAR and yearly maximum Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), we first identified and mapped forests with a producer accuracy (PA) of 96% and user accuracy (UA) of 98%. The resultant forest map showed reasonable spatial and areal agreements with the optical-based forest maps of Fine Resolution Observation and Monitoring Global Land Clover (FROM-GLC) and GlobalLand30. We then extracted rubber plantations from the forest map according to their deciduous features (using minimum Land Surface Water Index, LSWI) and rapid changes in canopies during Rubber Defoliation and Foliation (RDF) period (using standard deviation of LSWI) and dense canopy in growing season (using maximum NDVI). The rubber plantation map yielded a high accuracy when validated by ground truth-based data (PA/UA > 86%) and evaluated with three farm-scale rubber plantation maps (PA/UA >88%). It is estimated that in 2010, Hainan Island had 2.11 × 10 6 ha of forest and 5.15 × 10 5 ha of rubber plantations. This study has demonstrated the potential of integrating 25-m PALSAR-based structure information, and Landsat-based spectral and phenology information for mapping tropical forests and rubber plantations.

Monodominance in the tropics is often seen as an unusual phenomenon due to the normally high diversity in tropical rain forests. Here we studied Parashorea chinensis H. Wang (Dipterocarpaceae) in a seasonal tropical forest in south-west China, to elucidate the mechanisms behind its monodominance. Twenty-eight 20 × 20-m plots were established in monodominant and mixed forest in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan province. All individuals ≥1 cm stem diameter and 16 soil variables were measured. Parashorea chinensis forest had a significantly higher mean tree dbh compared with mixed forest. Diversity did not differ significantly between the two forest types. However, within monodominant patches, all diversity indices decreased with an increase in P. chinensis dominance. Floristic composition of P. chinensis forest did differ significantly from the mixed forest. These differences were associated with more fertile soils (significantly higher pH, Mn, K and lower carbon pools and C:N ratio) in the P. chinensis forest than the mixed forest. In contrast to current paradigms, this monodominant species is not associated with infertile, but with fertile soils. Parashorea chinensis seems to be especially associated with high manganese concentrations which it can tolerate, and with edaphic conditions (water, K) that allow this tall and exposed emergent species to maintain its water balance. This is in contrast with most previous studies on monodominance in the tropics that found either no effect of soil properties, or predict associations with nutrient-poor soils.

We censused all free-standing trees ≥1 cm diameter at breast height (dbh) in a 20-ha plot established in a tropical seasonal rainforest in Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, southwest China. A total of 95,834 free-standing trees ≥1 cm dbh were recorded, and 95,498 individuals (accounting for 99.65% of the total), including 468 morphospecies in 213 genera and 70 families, were identified. Thirteen of 468 species (2.78%) had more than 1,000 individual ≥1 cm dbh, which represented 56.36% individuals of the total. On the other hand, 230 of 468 species (49.14%) had a mean density of ≤1 tree per ha, and 69 of 468 species (14.74%) were singletons in the 20-ha plot. The mean species richness, density and basal area per ha were 216.50 species, 4,791.70 stems and 42.34 m2, respectively. Pittosporopsis kerrii (20,918 stems, ≥1 cm dbh) of Icacinaceae and Parashorea chinensis (7,919 stems, ≥1 cm dbh) of Dipterocarpaceae were the two most abundant species dominating the emergent layer and treelet layer, respectively. Compared with other 50-ha plots established in other equatorial regions, tree species richness per ha and tree abundance per ha of the plot were at the moderate level.

The degree to which variation in species distribution is predictable from topographic variation is of considerable current interest. In this paper, canonical correspondence analysis (CCA), linear regression and principal coordinates of neighbour matrices (PCNM) models were used to explain the variation in the distributions of the 13 dominant species in a 20-ha tropical rain-forest plot in China. The results showed that: (1) Tree distribution maps show that some species are mainly found in the gullies of the plot, whereas others occur on the slopes. Which indicates topographic variables are important factors for the distribution pattern of species. (2) Both linear regression and CCA results show that convexity and elevation are the most important variables effecting distribution of trees. For saplings, elevation, convexity and aspect explain 15.3%, 9.0% and 10.1% of the total variation of species abundance. For poles, elevation and convexity explain 19.3% and 11.4% respectively. However, only 5.3% of the total variation is explained for adults. (3) The PCNM results showed that topography alone explained 20%, 24% and 5% of the total variation of species abundance for saplings, poles and adults, respectively. Overall evidence for topographic control of the tropical tree distribution is strong, but the explanatory power of topographic variables was a small part of the total of variation.

The ecological consequences of converting tropical forests to rubber plantations on the soil microbial compositions and diversity remain unknown. By using an Illumina MiSeq sequencing analysis, we assessed the compositions and diversity of bacterial and fungal community in soils of rubber plantation (or rubber forest, RF), secondary tropical forest (STF), and tropical seasonal rainforest (TSR) in Xishuangbanna, southwest China. Our findings revealed that (a) for bacterial composition, Bacillaceae was the most dominant family (13.60%) in RF soil, while it only accounted for 4.13% in STF and 6.92% in TSR. For fungal composition, the largest family in soils of RF was Basidiomycota_unclassified. However, the largest family in STF and TSR was Russulaceae. (b) Number of operational taxonomic units, Chao index, and Shannon index of bacterial community in soil of RF were significantly higher than those of TSR and STF. However, these diversity indices of fungal community in RF were significantly lower than those o...

Studying the spatial pattern and interspecific associations of plant species may provide valuable insights into processes and mechanisms that maintain species coexistence. Point pattern analysis was used to analyze the spatial distribution patterns of twenty dominant tree species, their interspecific spatial associations and changes across life stages in a 20-ha permanent plot of seasonal tropical rainforest in Xishuangbanna, China, to test mechanisms maintaining species coexistence. Torus-translation tests were used to quantify positive or negative associations of the species to topographic habitats. The results showed: (1) fourteen of the twenty tree species were negatively (or positively) associated with one or two of the topographic variables, which evidences that the niche contributes to the spatial pattern of these species. (2) Most saplings of the study species showed a significantly clumped distribution at small scales (0–10 m) which was lost at larger scales (10–30 m). (3) The degree of spatial clumping deceases from saplings, to poles, to adults indicates that density-dependent mortality of the offspring is ubiquitous in species. (4) It is notable that a high number of positive small-scale interactions were found among the twenty species. For saplings, 42.6% of all combinations of species pairs showed positive associations at neighborhood scales up to five meters, but only 38.4% were negative. For poles and adults, positive associations at these distances still made up 45.5% and 29.5%, respectively. In conclusion, there is considerable evidence for the presence of positive interactions among the tree species, which suggests that species herd protection may occur in our plot. In addition, niche assembly and limited dispersal (likely) contribute to the spatial patterns of tree species in the tropical seasonal rain forest in Xishuangbanna, China.

Traditionally, ecologists use lattice (regional summary) count data to simulate tree species distributions to explore species coexistence. However, no previous study has explicitly compared the difference between using lattice count and basal area data and analyzed species distributions at both individual species and community levels while simultaneously considering the combined scenarios of life stage and scale. In this study, we hypothesized that basal area data are more closely related to environmental variables than are count data because of strong environmental filtering effects. We also address the contribution of niche and the neutral (i.e., solely dependent on distance) factors to species distributions. Specifically, we separately modeled count data and basal area data while considering life stage and scale effects at the two levels with simultaneous autoregressive models and variation partitioning. A principal coordinates of neighbor matrix (PCNM) was used to model neutral spatial effects at the community level. The explained variations of species distribution data did not differ significantly between the two types of data at either the individual species level or the community level, indicating that the two types of data can be used nearly identically to model species distributions. Neutral spatial effects represented by spatial autoregressive parameters and the PCNM eigenfunctions drove species distributions on multiple scales, different life stages and individual species and community levels in this plot. We concluded that strong neutral spatial effects are the principal mechanisms underlying the species distributions and thus shape biodiversity spatial patterns.