High resilience of Pacific Island forests to a category- 5 cyclone.

Assessing how forests respond to, and recuperate from, cyclones is critical to understanding forest dynamics and planning for the impacts of climate change. Projected increases in the intensity and frequency of severe cyclones can threaten both forests and forest-dependent communities. The Pacific Islands are subject to frequent low-intensity cyclones, but there is little information on the effects of high intensity cyclones, or on how forest stewardship practices may affect outcomes.

Scale-Dependent Influences of Distance and Vegetation on the Composition of Aboveground and Belowground Tropical Fungal Communities.

Fungi provide essential ecosystem services and engage in a variety of symbiotic relationships with trees. In this study, we investigate the spatial relationship of trees and fungi at a community level. We characterized the spatial dynamics for above- and belowground fungi using a series of forest monitoring plots, at nested spatial scales, located in the tropical South Pacific, in Vanuatu.