Wood and foliar respiration of tropical wet forest environment

Wood and foliar respiration from tropical forests constitute major components of ecosystem respiration that may control their productivity and carbon storage. However, few estimates on tropical forests vary greatly. Furthermore, the trees in these forests respire great amounts of carbon, but impacts of individual tree species on respiration is not well known. We examined wood and foliar respiration in this environment in relation to individual tree species. The objectives of this study were to: 1) identify how respiration rates relate to scaling variables for wood and foliage, 2) examine the effects of individual tree species on these relationships, 3) extrapolate the rates to the annual fluxes of the whole stands, and 4) determine if tree species differed in these fluxes. Established on an abandoned pasture in 1988 at La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica, the monodominant stands contained four native species in a complete randomized block design. Respiration rates based on tissue surface area ranged among dominant tree species from 0.6 to 1.0 μg C m^-2 s^-1 for small diameter wood (<10cm), 1.0 to 1.8 μg C m^-2 s^-1 for large diameter wood, and 0.7 to 0.8 μg C m^-2 s^-1 for foliage. Understory species had similar wood respiration rates, but foliage respiration rates were about half of those for canopy leaves. Among surface area, volume, or biomass, respiration rates scaled best with surface area for wood with small diameter, volume or biomass for large diameter wood, and leaf area for foliage. These relationships differed slightly among tree species and between canopy trees and understory species. Foliar respiration rate was generally related to leaf nitrogen content, and this relationship differed among dominant tree species. Temperature response of foliar respiration also differed among tree species and canopy class. However, daily and annual temperature fluctuations had less than 3% effect on annual flux. Annual respiratory fluxes from wood and foliage averaged 11 Mg C hectare^-1. The difference between species with highest and lowest fluxes was about 3 Mg C hectare^-1, with the highest coming from species with the most amount of biomass and the lowest coming from species with the least biomass. Wood and foliage respiratory fluxes of the whole stand partitioned to canopy foliage ranged from a third to a little less than half, while the flux partitioned to dominant tree wood differed very little from about half. Our results suggest strong abiotic control of wood and foliage respiratory fluxes in this environment, while species affect the fluxes through differences in biomass.