2021 Data (Information)

Luquillo Forest Dynamics Plot hurricane damage and census datasets

Murphy, Lora Elizabeth; Uriarte, María

The Luquillo Forest Dynamics Plot (LFDP) of the Luquillo LTER (https://luquillo.lter.network/) has been producing data since its establishment in 1990. The LFDP is a 16-ha permanent forest plot (SW corner 18 degrees 20’ N, 65 degrees 49’ W) located near El Verde Field Station in the Luquillo Mountains of northeastern Puerto Rico. The plot is 500 m N-S and 320 m E-W. All tree stems within the LFDP are tagged and regularly censused using standard protocols (Condit 1998, Thompson et al. 2002). While most datasets from the LFDP are available from the Luquillo LTER site, the datasets made available here are not currently available elsewhere.

There are three datasets, all in comma-separated text format. For all, each row is a single tagged individual tree from the LFDP plot.

LFDP Georges storm damage data.csv is a list of field-based damage assessments of a subset of LFDP trees after Hurricane Georges (1998).
LFDP Maria storm damage data.csv is a list of field-based damage assessments and mortality status of all tagged trees larger than 10 cm diameter at breast height (DBH) in the LFDP after Hurricane Maria (2017).
LFDP 2021 tree census.csv is an abridged version of the regular census of all tagged trees in the LFDP, conducted in 2021.

Additional metadata is contained within a README within the downloadable file.

This work is in support of Uriarte, M., L. Murphy, Y. Ma, G. Arellano, J. Thompson, J.K. Zimmerman, and X. Xu. Hurricane disturbance regimes and plant functional diversity jointly shape tropical forest carbon balance. Submitted.