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ABSTRACT Secondary forests are a vital part of the tropical landscape, and their worldwide extent and importance continues to increase. Here, we present the largest chronosequence data set on forest succession in the wet tropics that includes both secondary and old‐growth sites. We performed 0.1 ha vegetation inventories in 30 sites in northeastern Costa Rica, including seven old‐growth forests and 23 secondary forests on former pastures, ranging from 10 to 42 yr. The secondary forest sites were formerly pasture for intervals of 10 yr had significantly lower species richness. Forest cover near the sites at the time of forest establishment did not significantly impact biomass or species richness, and the species composition of older secondary forest sites (>30 yr) converged with that of old growth. These results emphasize the resilience of tropical ecosystems in this region and the high conservation value of secondary forests.
Letcher et al. (2009) studied this question.