Ecological rhythms and the management of humid tropical forests - Examplesfrom the Caribbean National Forest, Puerto Rico

A common premise in modern forest management is that land management should operate over large enough spatial and temporal scales that common natural disturbances are present and implicitly considered. Less emphasis has been focused on managing humid tropical forest ecosystems with the periodic ecol ogical processes that occur between disturbances. The central premise of th is paper is that timing management activities to periodic ecological proces ses that occur between disturbances is an additional prerequisite for the e ffective management of humid tropical forests. Ecological rhythms are defin ed here as biological or biogeochemical processes that have definable perio dicities and include phenological, circadian, biogeochemical, and behaviora l processes. The paper documents the use of ecological rhythms in the manag ement of endangered species and water resources in the Caribbean National F orest of Northeastern Puerto Rico. While this type of dynamic management ha s proven benefits, managers and regulatory agencies have been hesitant to u tilize complex, ecologically based dynamic management schedules because the y can be difficult to monitor and regulate. Fortunately, recent technologic al advantages greatly increase the ability to conduct complex real-time, sp atially explicit management. Identifying important ecological rhythms and d eveloping administrative structures that can integrate them into management will be a major challenge in both tropical and temperate environments in t he coming decades. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.