Global change factors, including climate change, disturbance regime shift, invasive species, and land-use change, pose major threats to forests, with the consequences ranging from declining productivity to altered patterns of succession to state transition. From the perspective of ecological communities, we know that species will not respond uniformly to global change, but we do not know how interactions among species will amplify or dampen responses. Because trees – the defining taxa of all forests – are both large and long-lived, studying the role of species interactions in determining responses to global change may take years or decades. This implies that long-term studies are required both document species interacts and to quantify their consequences for individual species and the community-at-large.
In this presentation, we discuss the capacity of long-term tree plots, where individual trees are monitored over the course of decades, to support species interactions research during an era of global change. We use tree plots at a series of Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites ranging across tropical, temperate, and boreal biomes to explore the challenges and opportunities. We provide examples of how long-term plot data can be coupled with other research to make inference on interactions among trees, birds, microbes, mammals, and other taxa. We identify common limitations to these long-term tree plot approaches and suggest paths forward for new research leveraging these plots as a hub for biodiversity research.
