La Mode Verte
Environmental Awareness Through Media ProductionsArchive for Vines
Vines Spreading Through American Tropical Forests at the Expense of Trees
www.latimes.com 23rd February 2011
Quoted from source:
‘Vines may be proliferating at the expense of trees in tropical forests across the Americas, scientists have found. This shift in abundance could affect the water in the ecosystem and how carbon is stored in the plants, potentially drying out forests and resulting in more carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. The report, published online last week in the journal Ecology Letters, surveyed eight studies on the state of woody vines in tropical forests from the Savannah River system and the Congaree National Park in South Carolina to an area in the central Amazon about 50 miles north of Manaus, Brazil. They found that in all forests, vines were increasing in abundance, biomass or both. “Global change is happening everywhere — and this is one of the first signs for tropical forests,” said Stefan Schnitzer, an ecologist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, who conducted the review with Frans Bongers of Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Woody vines evolved to escape the dimly lit confines under the trees in tropical forests by climbing up tree trunks and branches, then spreading their networks of leaves over the dense treetops that make up the forest canopy. They block sunlight from the tree leaves they cover, and compete with the trees for water and nutrients.’
