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Forests sequester a substantial portion of anthropogenic carbon emissions. Many open questions concern how. We address two of these questions (Wright and Calderón 2025). Has leaf and fine litter production changed? And what is the contribution of old-growth forests? We address these questions with long-term records (≥10 years) of total, reproductive, and especially foliar fine litter production from 32 old-growth forests. We expect increases in forest productivity associated with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and, in cold climates, with rising temperatures. We evaluate the statistical power of our analysis using simulations of known temporal trends parameterized with sample sizes (number of years) and levels of interannual variation observed for each record. Statistical power is inadequate to detect biologically plausible trends for records lasting less than 20 years. Just four old-growth forests have records of fine litter production lasting longer than 20 years, and these four provide no evidence for increases. Three of the four forests are in central Panama, also have long-term records of wood production, and both components of aboveground production are unchanged over 21 to 38 years. The possibility that recent increases in forest productivity are limited for old-growth forests deserves more attention. Modest interannual variation characterizes fine litter production, and more variable phenomena will require even longer records to evaluate global change responses with sufficient statistical power. The data files and R scripts in this data package recreate the analyses of Wright and Calderón (2025). References Wright, S. J. and O. Calderón. 2025. Statistical power and the detection of global change responses: The case of leaf production in old-growth forests. Ecology (accepted 28 October 2024; manuscript ECY23-1254.R1)
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This content will become publicly available on January 1, 2026
Statistical power and the detection of global change responses: The case of leaf production in old‐growth forests
Abstract Forests sequester a substantial portion of anthropogenic carbon emissions. Many open questions concern how. We address two of these questions. Has leaf and fine litter production changed? And what is the contribution of old‐growth forests? We address these questions with long‐term records (≥10 years) of total, reproductive, and especially foliar fine litter production from 32 old‐growth forests. We expect increases in forest productivity associated with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and, in cold climates, with rising temperatures. We evaluate the statistical power of our analysis using simulations of known temporal trends parameterized with sample sizes (in number of years) and levels of interannual variation observed for each record. Statistical power is inadequate to detect biologically plausible trends for records lasting less than 20 years. Modest interannual variation characterizes fine litter production, and more variable phenomena will require even longer records to evaluate global change responses with sufficient statistical power. Just four old‐growth forests have records of fine litter production lasting longer than 20 years, and these four provide no evidence for increases. Three of the four forests are in central Panama, also have long‐term records of wood production, and both components of aboveground production are unchanged over 21–38 years. The possibility that recent increases in forest productivity are limited for old‐growth forests deserves more attention.
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- PAR ID:
- 10623841
- Publisher / Repository:
- Ecological Society of America
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Ecology
- Volume:
- 106
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0012-9658
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Forests sequester a substantial portion of anthropogenic carbon emissions. Many open questions concern how. We address two of these questions. Has leaf and fine litter production changed? And what is the contribution of old-growth forests? We address these questions with long-term records (≥10 years) of total, reproductive, and especially foliar fine litter production from 32 old-growth forests. We expect increases in forest productivity associated with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and, in cold climates, with rising temperatures. We evaluate the statistical power of our analysis using simulations of known temporal trends parameterized with sample sizes (number of years) and levels of interannual variation observed for each record. Statistical power is inadequate to detect biologically plausible trends for records lasting less than 20 years. Modest interannual variation characterizes fine litter production. More variable phenomena will require even longer records to evaluate global change responses with sufficient statistical power. Just four old-growth forests have records of fine litter production lasting longer than 20 years, and these four provide no evidence for increases. Three of the four forests are in central Panama, also have long-term records of wood production, and both components of aboveground production are unchanged over 21 to 38 years. The possibility that recent increases in forest productivity are limited for old-growth forests deserves more attention. This data package contains previously unpublished data from four old-growth forests in central Panama. Data compiled from the published literature for another 28 forests and the R scripts required to recreate our analyses can be found here: https://smithsonian.dataone.org/view/urn:uuid:8bbcd334-059b-45b1-9b83-94b52abbd6f8.more » « less
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