2020 ESA Annual Meeting (August 3 - 6)

COS 127 Abstract - Spatial and temporal change in the Lanjenchi tropical forest dynamic plot, Taiwan

Chen-Chia Ku1, Wei-Chun Chao2, Yao-Wen Lee2 and Jianwu Tang3, (1)Program of Agriculture Science, National Chiayi University, Chiayi, Taiwan, (2)Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, National Chiayi University, Chiayi, Taiwan, (3)The Ecosystems Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, The University of Chicago, Woods Hole, MA
Background/Question/Methods

Lanjenchi forest dynamic plot is locating in the southernmost of Taiwan. Due to the northeast monsoon wind, the vegetation separated into different vegetation types. To understand the dynamics of beta diversity from four different habitats in four times census, we measured all woody species’ DBH and computed the number of survival trees in the Lanjenchi plot. Total beta diversity will be partitioned into LCBD indices, which were tested for significance and mapped. Temporal Beta Indices (TBI) were computed from abundance and presence-absence data and test for significance from 1997 to 2019.

Results/Conclusions

The result shows that windward habitat has a higher stem density than the other three habitats, but stem density decreases sharply among the year. The creek habitat shows that the LCBD with the most quadrats is significantly larger than other habitats from 1997 to 2019. However, the number of significant quadrats is decreasing with time. The TBI result shows that the proportion of species loss in windward habitat is greater than the species increase, revealing that the decreasing stem density affects the species composition. The abundance of the top 10 dominant species and some critically endangered species, which distributed in windward habitats, have decreased obviously since 1997. Overall, this research utilizes the 23 years data and indicates that individual in windward habitats is susceptible to environmental factors under the changing climate and cause the change in species composition.