The Center for Tropical Forest Science, or CTFS, was a consortium of forest researchers who pursued long-term research on tree populations using comparable census method. The work developed out of a study of 50 hectares of forest on
Barro Colorado Island
Barro Colorado Island is located in the man-made Gatun Lake in the middle of the Panama Canal. The island was formed when the waters of the Chagres River were dammed to form the lake in 1913. When the waters rose, they covered a significant par ...
in Panama begun in 1981. All individual trees larger than 1 centimeter in stem diameter were measured, mapped, and identified, which included 300 different species. This census has been repeated every five years since. Parallel censuses of large forest plots were carried out in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
Numerous scientific research reports on tree species
diversity
Diversity, diversify, or diverse may refer to:
Business
*Diversity (business), the inclusion of people of different identities (ethnicity, gender, age) in the workforce
*Diversity marketing, marketing communication targeting diverse customers
* ...
,
distribution Distribution may refer to:
Mathematics
* Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations
*Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a vari ...
,
life span, and growth rates have been published based on these plots. CTFS was directed out of the
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in
Panama City
Panama City ( es, Ciudad de Panamá, links=no; ), also known as Panama (or Panamá in Spanish), is the capital and largest city of Panama. It has an urban population of 880,691, with over 1.5 million in its metropolitan area. The city is loca ...
, Panama.
*NOTE: In 2013 the Center for Tropical Forest Science transitioned to
ForestGEO, the Forest Global Earth Observatory.
References
*
External links
Center for Tropical Forest ScienceUnited Nations Environment ProgrammeUS Long Term Ecological Research NetworkSmithsonian Tropical Research Institute
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Forest research institutes
Research institutes in Panama
International research institutes
Forestry in Central America