Data from: Lianas associated with continued forest biomass losses following large-scale disturbances

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Lianas are important to rainforest ecosystems but often impede tree growth and increase tree mortality and stem damage after disturbances that favour their growth. Understanding how lianas affect biomass recovery and rates of carbon sequestration following disturbance is therefore of crucial importance. In this study, we determine how a tropical forest recovers biomass following a large-scale disturbance and test how this varies with liana dominance and stem damage. We use remote sensing methods to develop a model, validated by field data from 40 20 m x 20 m vegetation plots, to measure change in tree above-ground biomass eight years after Tropical Cyclone Yasi damaged logged forests in the Australian Wet Tropics. We related tree biomass changes to field measures of current liana dominance over trees, expressed as liana: tree basal area ratio, and assessed how these measures related to tree stem damage. Biomass declined in 34 of the 40 plots during the eight years post-disturbance, with loss rates and proportions of damaged tree stems increasing with the liana: tree ratio. From spatial upscaling, we found a net loss in biomass across the study landscape over the same period. Our results show that, following disturbances, lianas not only limit tree biomass recovery but are also associated with further biomass declines, most likely through their contribution to stem damage and delayed mortality. Furthermore, our finding of net biomass loss across the landscape since the cyclone shows that, post-disturbance, rainforests can act as a carbon source with consequences for the global carbon sink.