Wood retention and transport in tropical, headwater streams, La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica

Wood in tropical streams has the potential to be more mobile than wood in otherwise similar temperate streams because of the warm and humid conditions that promote decay and the more frequent and flashier floods of the tropics. To test this hypothesis, we monitored all large wood pieces for 2.3 years in 10 50-m-long reaches of old-growth headwater streams in La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica. Annual wood retention rates for pieces ranged from 0.55 to 0.91 among the sites, and retention rates by volume ranged from 0.67 to 0.99. Assuming steady state wood load, which is reasonable for La Selva, these rates are equivalent to mean residence times of 2.2–10.6 years for pieces, and 3.0–83.2 years for a volume of wood. Calculating mean residence time from the weighted average of retention rates gives an average residence time of 4.9 years for a piece of wood and 6.9 years for a volume of wood. These values are less than those reported for old-growth temperate forests, supporting our hypothesis. Mobility of individual pieces was best predicted by piece length relative to stream width (lr, higher lr led to lower mobility), channel gradient (s, higher s led to higher mobility), and piece integration into the channel (unattached pieces were 2.6 times more mobile than attached, ramp, or bridge pieces). Temporal variation in retention rates was well explained by variation in peak flow. All four of these factors have also been observed to influence mobility in the temperate zone. The higher mobility of wood in our study site relative to the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest may be explained by the flashy and frequent floods, the high decay rate, or the branching morphology of the native trees; but differentiating the role of these factors, particularly flow and decay, will be complicated by their covariation across climates.