Microclimate variability within cloud forest tree canopies: Exploring effects of land management and epiphyte removal

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

11:40 AM – 11:48 AM MST

Location: Embassy Suites, Snowberry

Speaker(s)

Damon Vaughan, PhD (he/him/his)

Post-doctoral researcher
University of Kentucky
St. Louis, Missouri, United States

Co-Author(s)

LL

Lauren Lowman, PhD

Associate Professor
Wake Forest University
NN

Nalini Nadkarni, PhD

Professor
University of Utah
TD

Todd Dawson, PhD

Professor
University of California, Berkeley
EC

Elenter Cubero

Universidad de Costa Rica
PG

Pablo Gutierrez

Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica
SG

Sybil Gotsch, PhD

Associate Professor
University of Kentucky

The buffering effects of vegetation can influence canopy microclimate conditions, causing differentiation from landscape-scale climate. We investigated several sources of this buffering in a tropical montane cloud forest in Costa Rica, installing microclimate arrays in pasture vs forest trees and in trees completely stripped of epiphytes vs control trees.

Learning Objectives:

Understand the effect that vegetation structures (such as epiphytes and surrounding forest) have on microclimate conditions as experienced by cloud forest plants.
Describe some real-world implications of this effect in terms of variables such as temperature, relative humidity, and solar radiation from an epiphyte removal experiment in Costa Rica.