Our Tahiti-based research assistant Solène Fabre has continued routine visits and collection of samples from litter traps and root ingrowth cores on Tetiaroa (together with intern Julie Andre), giving us over a year of the first ever data on forest productivity from tropical atolls (Figure 1). A striking discovery has been the very high root productivity observed on some atolls - we think this is the highest root activity ever observed in a tropical forest anywhere on Earth and are trying to puzzle out the reasons behind this.
These data will be combined with nutrient analysis, currently being run through the Oxford lab, to quantify nutrient cycling in bird-rich and bird-poor islands. The routine visits and data collection by Solène will continue until August 2024.
setting up a plot
launch
collecting samples of root ingrowth