2019 Height-Diameter Allometry Data for Palm Species on the Barro Colorado Island 50-ha Plot
Please cite this dataset as
Ramos, Pablo, Paulino Villareal, and Helene C. Muller-Landau. 2024. 2019 Height-Diameter Allometry Data for Palm Species on the Barro Colorado Island 50-ha Plot. Smithsonian Figshare. https://doi.org.10.25573/data.25021787
Objective:
Collect height allometry data for BCI palm species to enable improved estimation of palm biomass stocks and fluxes using palm-specific biomass allometry equations including height such as those of Goodman et al. 2013 Forest Ecology and Management. Particular interest in heights of Socratea exorrhiza, given that this species grows in diameter as well as height.
Where: 50 ha plot on Barro Colorado Island, Panama.
How: Measurements were taken with a Nikon forestry laser rangefinder using the sine method (Larjavaara & Muller-Landau, 2013).
Data processing
HCM manually combined the 3 original data files (morepalmhtform.xlsx, moresocrex.xlsx, otherpalms2015.xlsx) into one file, combineAllPalmHeights2019.xlsx, that just had rows with data. There were problems with number formats for hom and altura columns – many of them were somehow misformatted as d.m dates, so had to be manually reentered. Also converted comments regarding the height of raices or sancos to a new column Altura sancos o raices. When there were comments on flores or frutas, changed values of flores or frutas, respectively, columns from blank to “si”. In cases where there was a comment “nada” or “no encontrado”, I changed status2019 to “DN” and moved that comment to the Notas column. Status2019 was changed to “A” for all cases with new data. Personas, frutas, and flores were standardized in terms of what types of entries were present.
Additional information:
Comments that were on the bottom of the spreadsheet of “morepalmhtform.xlsx”:
nota Altura mínimo base hoja, Altura máxima tronc, Altura maximo hojas en el caso de de Bachman’s donde algunos tallos crecen con ángulo pronunciado y no permite medir el largo del tronco directamente hemos puesto la medida de la distancia horizontal en metros ejem 5.6- 4.8 el 4.8 es desde la base hasta donde llega la altura de manara horizontal. La idea es calcular la hipotenusa para saber el largo del tronco |
Columna dist base: es la distancia desde la base del tallo inclianado hasta donde el tallo empieza los 90 grados |
Author contributions
Helene C. Muller-Landau selected the trees, designed the methods, processed the data, and drafted the metadata. Pablo Ramos and Paulino Villareal collected the field data. Under the “Personas” column, R = Ramos, V = Villareal, E = Equipo = Ramos + Villareal.
Literature Cited
Condit, R., R. Perez, S. Aguilar, S. Lao, R. Foster, and S. P. Hubbell. 2019. Complete data from the Barro Colorado 50-ha plot: 423617 trees, 35 years, 2019 version. https://doi.org/10.15146/5xcp-0d46
Goodman, R. C., O. L. Phillips, D. del Castillo Torres, L. Freitas, S. Tapia Cortese, A. Monteagudo, and T. R. Baker. 2013. Amazon palm biomass and allometry. Forest Ecology and Management, 310: 994-1004. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2013.09.045
Larjavaara, M., and H. C. Muller-Landau. 2013. Measuring tree height: a quantitative comparison of two common field methods in a moist tropical forest. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12071
Muller-Landau, H. C. 2023. Combined Band Dendrometer Protocol Used by ForestGEO in Panama. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Smithsonian Figshare. https://doi.org/10.25573/data.20010176
