Smithsonian Center for Tropical Forest Science

The world's most biologically rich ecosystem, the tropical rainforest, is also its most poorly understood. To better understand and manage tropical rainforests, the Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS) of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, through a consortium of scientific collaborators and institutions around the world, coordinates a network of long-term research programs in the natural and social sciences. The central feature of the CTFS network is the standardized Forest Dynamics Plot. Within each plot, every tree over one centimeter in diameter is identified according to species and monitored through time. CTFS is now monitoring more than 3 million trees of 6000 species, at least 10% of all known tropical tree species.