CTFS.main {CTFS} | R Documentation

## Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS) : Analysis of Long Term Forest Plot of Large Size

### Description

The CTFS Long Term Forest Plots provide ecologists and foresters a unique opportunity to describe and interpret the demographics of individual tree species, the spatial patterns of species population dynamics and to compare these processes across tropical forests throughout the world. The CTFS package provides user friendly access to R based tools for data management and analysis. These tools represent a continuing world-wide collaboration of scientists interested in unlocking the mysteries of these diverse and dynamic forests.

### Details

The CTFS project web site is: http://www.ctfs.si.edu/.

The CTFS package provides functions for analysing tropical forest structure, dynamics and species composition including the effects of habitat differences, neighborhood effects. New analyses will be continually added as collaborators produce and publish their results.

The CTFS package is explictily designed to be applied to the data collected from the CTFS Long Term Forest Plots. It is also intended to be sufficiently general in data requirements and broad in types of analyses to be of use to other researchers in the field of forest dynamics.

The CTFS plots are a complete enumeration and mapping of all stems greater than 1 mm in diameter of all woody species in a many hectare plot. The plot size varies from 16 to 50 ha across sites with a 50 ha plot established at most sites. These plots are reenumerated on average every 5 years. CTFS and collaborators have established over 20 plots through out the tropics which includes ever-wet rain forests and seasonally dry forests. To date, over 3 million trees have been enumerated, identified, mapped and, at many sites, recensused many times. Recensuses and the establishment of new sites continues. http://www.ctfs.si.edu/sites/programs/programs.htm

For a complete description of the method of plot establishment and enumeration see http://ctfs.si.edu/bibliography. Look for Condit, R. 1998. Tropical Forest Census Plots. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, and R. G. Landes Company, Georgetown, Texas.

Topics of Analysis (Examples of what is and will be available)

1. Forest Structure: size distribution, abundance, basal area, biomass, spatial distribution of trees. Available version 1.0.
2. Population Dynamics: population abundance change, mortality, recruitment, diameter growth rates. Available version 1.0.
3. Density Dependence: analysis of effect of immediate biotic neighborhood on structure and dynamics of populations. Available version 1.0.
4. Above Ground Biomass estimations: can be analysed as a characteristic of an individual tree, changes over time and space. Available version 1.0.
5. Habitat Specificity: based on abundance and dynamics. Planned for next update.

Manual chapters are also available that focus on the use of R and the CTFS package for the CTFS plots and data structure.

R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. R is distributed as free software and compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX, Windows and Mac operating systems. CTFS uses R to analyze datafiles of its large Forest Dynamics Plot Network. More information about R can be found at the R Project for Statistical Computing Website:http://www.r-project.org.

### Author(s)

package maintainer: Pamela Hall, phall@alum.mit.edu

### References

http://www.ctfs.si.edu

### See Also

`CTFS.abundance`, `CTFS.basalarea`, `CTFS.biomass`, `CTFS.datafiles`, `CTFS.diversity`, `CTFS.groupcats`, `CTFS.growth`, `CTFS.maps`, `CTFS.manual`, `CTFS.mortality`, `CTFS.quadfunctions`, `CTFS.recruitment`

[Package CTFS version 1.00 Index]