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Understanding the role of alien species in forest communities, and how native and alien species interact to shape the composition and structure of contemporary forests, is of critical importance to invasion ecology and natural resource management. We used vegetation data collected over a 20‐year period in 341 permanent plots representing remnants of closed‐canopy forests and post‐agricultural secondary forests across Puerto Rico to compare changes in the composition and abundance of native and alien woody species in plots with and without aliens across different forest types and to assess whether aliens and natives show divergence or convergence regarding functional roles and ecological strategies. We also tested the applicability of Grime's CSR (competitive, stress‐tolerant, and ruderal strategies) theory to explain naturalization success. Species richness and abundance of natives are consistently lower in plots in which aliens are present compared with those without them. This negative association between aliens and natives has been consistent over the 20 years and across all forest types. Both native and total richness slightly increased over the 20 years, but the increase in native species richness was three times lower in plots with aliens relative to those without aliens. The CSR classification provided insight into the naturalization success of aliens. Corroborating the "join the locals" hypothesis, aliens use the same functional spaces as natives. The exception is in dry forests, where aliens and natives differ in the use of functional spaces, a result that corroborates the "try harder" hypothesis. Generally, aliens were better competitors compared with natives, and natives were more stress‐tolerant than aliens. Our combined results suggest that alien species may inhibit population growth or even drive local changes in native plant communities by transforming the assembly and dynamics of tropical forests. Ultimately, modifications linked to invasive species may have significant implications for local forests, affecting their regeneration and productivity. More definitive conclusions require additional plot censuses, and analyses of disturbance regimes and stand‐age structure to reveal the long‐term implications of alien species on regenerating tropical forests, including their vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity to cope with various aspects of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Logged forests cover four million square kilometers of the tropics, capturing carbon more rapidly than temperate forests and harboring rich biodiversity. Restoring these forests is essential to help avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Yet monitoring tropical forest recovery is challenging. We track the abundance of early-successional species in a forest restoration concession in Indonesia. If the species are carefully chosen, they can be used as an indicator of restoration progress. We present SLIC-UAV, a new pipeline for processing Unoccupied Aerial Vehicle (UAV) imagery using simple linear iterative clustering (SLIC)to map early-successional species in tropical forests. The pipeline comprises: (a) a field verified approach for manually labeling species; (b) automatic segmentation of imagery into “superpixels” and (c) machine learning classification of species based on both spectral and textural features. Creating superpixels massively reduces the dataset's dimensionality and enables the use of textural features, which improve classification accuracy. In addition, this approach is flexible with regards to the spatial distribution of training data. This allowed us to be flexible in the field and collect high-quality training data with the help of local experts. The accuracy ranged from 74.3% for a four-species classification task to 91.7% when focusing only on the key early-succesional species. We then extended these models across 100 hectares of forest, mapping species dominance and forest condition across the entire restoration project.

Soil microorganisms regulate multiple input and loss pathways of soil carbon (C); hence, changes in microbial communities are expected to affect soil organic matter (SOM) cycling and storage. Despite this, very little is known about how microbes respond to changes in soil structure and vegetation with land use and land cover change. This study aimed to identify relationships between microbial community composition and the distribution of SOM among soil aggregate fractions to answer the following research questions: (1) Are different microbial groups associated with different SOM pools? and (2) How do these relationships differ with changes in vegetation during tropical forest succession? We measured microbial composition via phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analysis and C and nitrogen (N) concentrations on physically separated aggregate fractions of soils from pastures, secondary forests (40 and 90 years old) naturally regrowing on abandoned pastures, and reference or primary forests in Puerto Rico. We found different microbial communities associated with different soil aggregate fractions. Fungal to bacterial ratios decreased and gram-positive to gram-negative bacterial ratios increased with decreasing physical fraction size (from the macroaggregates to the silt and clay fractions). Microbial composition also varied with land cover type and forest successional stage, with consistent trends among soil fractions. These results show that the soil matrix and soil microsite properties play an important role in the spatial distribution of fungal and bacterial-dominated communities. The similarities in land cover effects on microbial communities at different spatial scales suggest similar controls may be influencing microbial composition with potential implications for SOM storage and turnover. In addition, the majority of C and N (relative to total soil C and fraction mass) was isolated in the macroaggregate-occluded silt and clay-sized fractions, suggesting that association with mineral surfaces, and not occlusion of particulate organic matter within aggregates, is the dominant stabilization mechanism for SOM in these highly-weathered, fine-textured soils. These results highlight the importance of soil aggregation in C storage but through mechanisms different than those reported for temperate grassland soils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To meet agendas for biodiversity conservation and mitigation of climate change, large-scale restoration initiatives propose ecological restoration as an alternative that can reconcile these two objectives. In ongoing ecosystem restoration, increased diversity is always associated with increased productivity (and consequent carbon stock), which is among the most important ecosystem functions. The ecological paradigm of this association is that ecosystem biodiversity (B) is positively related to both ecosystem functions and services (EF and ES). However, BEF and BES relationships vary spatially and temporally, which makes understanding these relationships relevant and important for practical restoration actions. In this study, we asked how biodiversity and carbon stock recovery occurs during tropical forest restoration. We reviewed literature of the relationships between BEF and BES in the context of ecological restoration and asked whether ecological restoration can recover both. In addition, we conducted a metadata analysis of studies on the recovery of biodiversity and biomass in regenerating tropical forests (n = 83) to find the best model that describes this relationship. In general, studies showed that ecosystem biodiversity and productivity are positively related, and that restoration can recover both. We found an asymptotic and positive correlation between biodiversity and biomass in tropical forests, suggesting limitation of the mutual gains of these two ecosystem properties during restoration. We discuss these results in the context of ecological theory and the practice of ecological restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: During the last few decades El Salvador has been considered as one of the most deforested countries in Latin America. Nevertheless, recent studies have pointed out the important forest recovery process currently occurring, which is favoured by socio-political changes recently experienced in this country. The latest research on forest recovery has been done at the level of the entire country; however, socio-environmental processes at the local level have not yet been examined. This article discusses the forest regrowth process at the local level in the natural area of Cinquera during the period from 1942 to 2004. It also illustrates how the effort made by local communities becomes an opportunity for the introduction of a new approach to biodiversity protection in El Salvador. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]