40 years of forest dynamics and tree demography in an intact tropical forest at M’Baïki in central Africa

Abstract

Abstract A vast silvicultural experiment was set up in 1982 nearby the town of M’Baïki in the Central African Republic to monitor the recovery of tropical forests after disturbance. The M’Baïki experiment consists of ten 4-ha Permanent Sample Plots (PSPs) that were assigned to three silvicultural treatments in 1986 according to a random block design. In each plot, all trees with a girth at breast height greater than 30 cm were spatially located, numbered, measured, and determined botanically. Girth, mortality and newly recruited trees, were monitored almost annually over the 1982–2022 period with inventory campaigns for 35 years. The data were earlier used to fit growth and population models, to study the species composition dynamics, and the effect of silvicultural treatments on tree diversity and aboveground biomass. Here, we present new information on the forest stand structure dynamics and tree demography. The data released from this paper cover the three control plots and constitute a major contribution for further studies about the biodiversity of intact tropical forests.