The Oldest, Slowest Rainforests in the World?

Former DPhil student Rocio Urrutia has a paper out in PLOS One describing the amazing slow dynamics and high biomass of the wonderful alerce forests of Chile (which was the core of her DPhil work). This is a southern outpost of our Global Ecosystems Monitoring network. The work shows how these massive trees seem to grow after a landslide or volcanic disturbance and can keep growing with little mortality for thousands of years, if they avoid fire or logging. A whole canopy of massive Nothofagus trees can grow up underneath them and grown and die on the timescale of hundreds of years.

Urrutia-Jalabert R, Malhi Y, Lara A (2015) The Oldest, Slowest Rainforests in the World? Massive Biomass and Slow Carbon Dynamics of Fitzroya cupressoidesTemperate Forests in Southern Chile_. PLoS ONE 10(9): e0137569. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0137569, Supp. Information 1, 2