What we Know about the Composition and Structure of Igapó Forests in the Amazon Basin.

The Amazon contains some of the most critical ecosystems on earth and Igapó forests are one of those ecosystems. They are flooded by “black-water”, leached runoff of forest litter. To help in our understanding of igapó forests, and to act as a resource for their future research, I review what we know about their composition and structure. I used my own sampling data to construct floristics tables of the tree species, and tables of physical structural parameters such as tree density, species richness basal area and above-ground biomass (AGB). In addition I used data gotten from literature searches on google scholar, biosys, WorldCat discovery services and other databases for all papers that sampled trees in plots within igapó forests. I found there was a total of 59 families sampled in all the plots. The families with the most genera were Fabaceae and Caesalpiniaceae, with the most species were Fabaceae and Euphorbiaceae, and with the most tree stems were Fabaceae and Euphorbiaceae. The most common genera were Mouriri and Lincania and the most common species were Virola elongate and Swartzia polyphylla. For structure, total stems had a wide range between 167 and 683 per ha, stem sizes generally conformed to a “reverse J” distribution pattern, mean stem sizes were ~20 cm diameter at breast height, there was a species richness range between 90 and 119 per ha, and igapó forests were more open than other forest-types in the Amazon basin. While these plots were in primary igapó forest, my samplings of secondary igapó forests showed they had a reduced structure compared to primary igapó forests but were similar within the different kinds of secondary igapó forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]