FRENCH GUIANA
- The GUYADIV network (D. Sabatier and J.-F. Molino, IRD-AMAP)
Since the 1986 settlement of the first 1-ha plots in Piste de St. Elie research station (PSE) by Daniel Sabatier and Marie-Françoise Prévost (1941-2013), the GUYADIV network has been continuously enriched with new plots from several other sites across French Guiana (among which the Nouragues and Paracou research stations). Jean-François Molino joined the team in 1993. The following scientists and technicians contributed to field work at one time or another: Michel Baisie, Olaf Bánki, Desmo Bétian, Wemo Bétian, Vincent Bezard, Philippe Birnbaum, Olivier Brunaux, Christian de Namur, Georges Elfort, Julien Engel, Raphaël Fernandez, Olivier Florès, Emile Fonty, Alain Franc, Charles François, Vincent Freycon, Chantal Geniez, Sophie Gonzalez, Jean-Yves Goret, Pierre Grenand, Jean-Marc Guehl, Stéphane Guitet, Flora Lokonadinpoulle, Cécile Madelaine-Antin, Eric Nicolini, Onoefe Ngwete, Dominique Paget, Raphaël Pélissier, Pascal Pétronelli, Petrus Naisso, Henri Puig, Bernard Riéra, Jean-Louis Smock, Michel Tarcy, Hans ter Steege, Alexis Walchli, Olivier Ziberlin.
The GUYADIV network now gathers > 200 plots of various sizes (from 20 m x 20 m up to 40 m x 1800 m) and inventory methods (full quadrat or point-centered quadrat; above 10 cm or above 2 cm dbh), resulting in > 86 000 censused trees, among which > 97% are identified to species or morphospecies. GUYADIV contributes with 63 1-ha plots to ATDN.
- The GUYAFOR network (Jérome Chave, CNRS, Laurent Descroix, ONF, Bruno Hérault, CIRAD / more information here)
The GUYAFOR network includes plots from several sites managed by ONF (including BAFOG, set up in the 1950s) and Cirad (notably Paracou, set up in 1984) for wood production experiments and biomass monitoring. Initially, most trees were identified with vernacular names provided by local tree plotters. Since 2007, Julien Engel (CNRS), Christopher Baraloto (ICTB), and Pascal Pétronelli (CIRAD) are working on the upgrade of those identifications to scientific (specific) names, including through field re-censuses and collection of botanical vouchers. Meanwhile, the network has been further expanded to several other sites. It presently gathers 125 1-ha plots, among which 8 contribute to ATDN and 29 to the ForestPlots.NET network.
The accuracy of botanical identifications in the GUYADIV and GUYAFOR networks is largely due to the availibility, quality and continous improvment of the collections held in the IRD Herbier de Guyane (CAY) and its network of international specialists.
French Guiana morphospecies
Based on the comparison of vouchers deposited at CAY, GUYADIV and GUYAFOR morphospecies lists of both teams have been merged, resulting in a shared list of 391 morphospecies from 97 genera and 44 angiosperm families. They represent around 20% of the 2000 tree species known to occur in French Guiana. 260 are illustrated on this website.
The standardisation and merging work has been carried out by:
- Unit research AMAP (Montpellier, France and Cayenne, French Guiana): Julien Engel (CNRS), Jean-François Molino (IRD) and Daniel Sabatier (IRD)
- Unit research EcoFoG (Kourou, French Guiana): Pascal Pétronelli (CIRAD)
- ICTB (International Center for Tropical Botany, Miami, USA): Christopher Baraloto