Super-charged tropical trees

The research showed that the woody growth of forests in north Borneo is half as great again as the most productive forests of north-west Amazonia. Whilst regional variation in wood production rates has been suspected, this research is the first to use identical methods in Amazonia and Borneo to measure properties of both the forests and their soils, making robust comparisons among different continents possible for the first time. The study was led by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the University of Leeds and examined differences in above-ground wood production (one component of the total uptake of carbon by plants), which is critically important in the global cycling of carbon. They found that trees are taller for a given diameter in Southeast Asia compared with South America, meaning they gain more biomass per unit of diameter growth, and this in part explains the differences observed. The research team also discovered that trees in north Borneo belonging to the family Dipterocarpaceae (or dipterocarps, translating literally to “winged seeds”) produce wood faster than neighbouring trees of other families, or any trees in the Amazonian sites. The average difference is 3.2 tons of wood per hectare per year. The two regions were compared as they are climatically similar with no annual dry season, and each region has a range of soil conditions, meaning the primary difference between them is the different tree species that happen to exist in each region.