Forest Biomass Carbon Stocks and Fluxes in a Broader Context: Insights and Opportunities Associated with the Central Panama Plot Network

TRACT. Comparisons among sites varying in climate and soils can yield important insights into the mechanisms shaping forest carbon stocks and fluxes. Research at a network of small plots spanning regional variation in central Panama, including a strong regional rainfall gradient and high geological heterogeneity, provides excellent opportunities for such comparisons, and places findings for Barro Colorado Island (BCI) in a broader context. Here, we examine regional variation in climate, soils, and land use history and discuss associated datasets. We then review previous work and present updated analyses of among-plot variation in aboveground biomass, aboveground woody productivity, and tree mortality rates with dry-season severity and soil fertility. We enumerate the different types of complementary datasets that have been collected in subsets of these plots, which offer opportunities to investigate alternative hypotheses regarding underlying mechanisms, and close with a discussion of promising directions for future research.