Talk:Secondary forest

Restructuring

I'm thinking of adjusting the format of the article slightly and incorporating existing information (as well as adding new information/references) into a few new categories. These new categories would include "Development", "Characteristics" (subheadings Biodiversity and Climate change mitigation), and "Biomes". Does this sound helpful? Pfeifkat000 (talk) 14:26, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Additional References?

[1] Martin, Philip A.; Newton, Adrian C.; Bullock, James M. (2013-12-22). "Carbon pools recover more quickly than plant biodiversity in tropical secondary forests". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 280 (1773): 20132236. doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.2236. ISSN 0962-8452. PMC 3826225. PMID 24197410.

[2] Leite, Márcio Fernandes Alves; Liu, Binbin; Gómez Cardozo, Ernesto; Silva, Hulda Rocha e; Luz, Ronildson Lima; Muchavisoy, Karol Henry Mavisoy; Moraes, Flávio Henrique Reis; Rousseau, Guillaume Xavier; Kowalchuk, George; Gehring, Christoph; Kuramae, Eiko Eurya (2022). "Microbiome resilience of Amazonian forests: Agroforest divergence to bacteria and secondary forest succession convergence to fungi". Global Change Biology. 29 (5): 1314–1327. doi:10.1111/gcb.16556. ISSN 1354-1013.

[3] Hall, Jefferson S.; Plisinski, Joshua S.; Mladinich, Stephanie K.; van Breugel, Michiel; Lai, Hao Ran; Asner, Gregory P.; Walker, Kendra; Thompson, Jonathan R. (2022-03-01). "Deforestation scenarios show the importance of secondary forest for meeting Panama's carbon goals". Landscape Ecology. 37 (3): 673–694. doi:10.1007/s10980-021-01379-4. ISSN 1572-9761.

[4] Blécourt, Marleen de; Brumme, Rainer; Xu, Jianchu; Corre, Marife D.; Veldkamp, Edzo (2013-07-19). "Soil Carbon Stocks Decrease following Conversion of Secondary Forests to Rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) Plantations". PLOS ONE. 8 (7): e69357. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069357. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 3716606. PMID 23894456.

--Pfeifkat000 (talk) 21:02, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Citation Needed

Only one citation that covers a sliver of the page — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.198.119.57 (talk) 15:34, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Untitled

This article is the same as Secondary_Rainforest and it needs to be combined into 1 article.

This appears to have been done. Canderra 21:44, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Should Second growth forest be merged with this article? KAM 15:12, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Definitely. Guettarda 00:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Yup. Bobanny 04:19, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

misleading?

"It can act as a buffer for more valuable forest." How is this misleading? It is from FAO. KAM 23:54, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

http://www.nature.org/wherewework/southamerica/brazil/work/art5080.html Here is the Nature Conservancy using secondary forest to protect The Atlantic Forest of Brazil for example. KAM 00:03, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

It's a little unclear what "valuable" means in this context - rewording may be appropriate. Guettarda 00:07, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• the misleading part is that a secondary forest often arises AFTER the damage of deforestation has been conducted. Many species may have become extinct to yield this secondary forest. i think the sentence is equivalent to someone saying: "Nuclear bombs arent all bad, because the nuclear winter ensuing would mitiate global warming". i think this article needs to become very much longer in order to express the subtlety of the "buffer" concept. Anlace 03:21, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I am confused as to where you are coming from. Secondary forests are often seen as lacking value, and thus, are not seen as worth protecting. It is important to point out that they are able to provide ecosystem services that non-forest habitat cannot - in terms of things like watershed protection and as buffers around remaining patches of primary forest. Changing the matrix around a patch of remnant forest from pasture to young secondary forest slows the loss of species from the patch of primary forest. It can also serve as a buffer that keeps the drying effects of winds, reduces tree mortality, etc.

You seem to be saying that "secondarisation of forests is bad, thus we cannot say anything good about secondary forests". I don't think this is an appropriate approach. Guettarda 11:41, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Some other issues:

• "; however, in tropical areas this resemblance may be superficial, since much of the soil nutrient content may have been lost with the primary forest removal."
  • Any form of secondarisation may result in nutrient loss, etc. However, the ultra-poor lateritic soils that people often associate with tropical forests, while extensive, are not the totality of tropical forests by any means. Adding this caveat to the original "It takes a secondary forest 40+ years to begin to resemble the original old-growth forest" makes the original statement less accurate. Of course, we really need to expand on this idea considerably. Still, the original wording is more accurate than the change.
• "The value of a secondary forest is often overlooked. A secondary forest protects the watershed, reduces erosion and provides habitat. It may also be a source of wood and other forest products. It can act as a buffer for more valuable forest. A secondary forest contains pioneer species which may be rare in a mature forest."
  • As I said above, "value" should be more specific, it could be seen as a value judgement, but the basic content is accurate

• i have restored most of this text, but i think we are now pushing the envelope in overglorifying the secondary forest and risking POV issues. further expansion of this article needs to cover more systematically the entirety of the issues of conversion from primary to secondary, and i dont mean from the lumber industry POV Anlace 03:46, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• "Secondary Forests often have less biodiversity than old growth forests" → "Secondary Forests typically are endowed with less biodiversity than old growth forests" - I'm not sure that this change is an improvement. In addition, this is really a function of what sort of secondary forest you're talking about. According to the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis, biodiversity peaks in secondary forests. Guettarda 00:33, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

your first point is well taken and i have changed the phrase back to its original sense. regarding the *second point see my comment above regarding "buffer". i think the "buffer" comment is an argumentative POV phrase. Anlace 03:33, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

"Buffer" is standard language in ecology for this kind of thing. Guettarda 11:41, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Photo

According to Reading the Forested Landscape by Tom Wessels, hurricanes or other high winds usually either snap the tops off trees or uproots them. A timber harvest on the other hand, where trees are cut with a saw, leaves stumps with a flat top, which appears to be the case in this photo. Perhaps the caption should be changed. KAM 12:49, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Second-growth versus third-growth

I can't say I'm terribly familiar with the term "third-growth" forest, but I'm rather puzzled by the distinction between secondary and "third-growth" forests. Anyone aware of any references that distinguish between the two? Guettarda (talk) 23:47, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Old-growth versus second-growth

The initial definition of a Second Growth forest is unclear. If "A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a major disturbance such as fire, insect infestation, timber harvest or windthrow, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident" then a Second-Growth forest would be indistinguishable from a Old-Growth one. But the article then describes how to distinguish the two. Surely a second growth forest has merely returned to the ground cover or height of an old growth one but retains other differences. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.71.43.37 (talk) 18:27, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Forest degradation

... redirects here. I'm not sure why, as there's little to nothing on that topic in this article. DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 00:02, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Forest degradation is a process that can take place in any kind of forest. Secondary forest is a condition of the forest which typically denotes that a forest is recuperating after degradation or deforestation. I suggest to create a new article. Pvanlaake (talk) 15:39, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2022

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 10 January 2022 and 23 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Cattasticaleks (article contribs).

Wiki Education assignment: BSC 4052 Conservation Biology

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2023 and 28 April 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Pfeifkat000 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by MadisonMat13 (talk) 13:56, 22 February 2023 (UTC)