Monteverde : Ecology and Conservation of a Tropical Cloud Forest

Ecosystem Ecology and Forest Dynamics

Nalini M. Nadkarni

Robert O. Lawton

Kenneth L. Clark

Teri J. Matelson

Doug Schaefer

The earth's surface supports living organisms and
their environments to form the biosphere, a thin film
of life around the planet. Organisms participate in
interacting systems or communities, and these com-
munities are coupled to their environments by the
transfer of matter and energy and by movements of
air, water, and organisms. Human activities in Monte-
verde and elsewhere can drastically alter forest eco-
systems. Textbooks on ecosystem ecology typically
include such topics as community structure and com-
position (including plant growth forms, vertical struc-
ture, niche space, species diversity), communities and
environments (species distributions along environ-
mental gradients, community classification, succes-
sion), production (food chains and webs, decom-
position and detritus, photosynthesis), and nutrient
cycling (mineral nutrition of organisms, soil develop-
ment, biogeochemistry).
Our understanding of tropical ecosystem ecology
generally falls short of what we know of other aspects
of tropical biology. There are far more studies con-
cerning population biology, autecology, and life his-
tory of tropical organisms than nutrient cycling, pro-
ductivity, and landscape ecology. This pattern is true

in Monteverde and in such well-studied tropical for-

ests as La Selva, Barro Colorado Island (BCI), and the

Luquillo National Forest (Lugo and Lowe 1995,

McDade et al. 1994). Logistical blocks to ecosystem

research exist because collaborating teams of scien-

tists are typically needed to tackle the multiple dis-

ciplines that ecosystem-level questions require, which

demands a large infrastructure and budget. Tempo-

ral problems exist because ecosystem-level phenom-

ena (e.g., tree mortality and forest regeneration) may

involve time scales longer than the life of a single

granting period or lifetime of a researcher. A strong

academic base for ecosystem ecology is lacking be-

cause the pool of existing studies is too small to draw

patterns and extrapolate trends.

These obstacles have not often been overcome in

Monteverde. No Monteverde institution has provided

the infrastructure to support ecosystem research (e.g.,

laboratory facilities, meteorological station, technical

library). Some community members have negative

feelings about experimental manipulations and de-

structive sampling sometimes needed to answer eco-

system ecology questions. From the 1970s to the 1990s,

Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) courses were

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