Characteristics of ecosystems under various anthropogenic impacts in a tropical forest region of Southeast Asia

Abstract. Given the severe anthropogenic pressure on tropical forests and the high demand for field observations of ecosystem characteristics, it is crucial to collect such data both in pristine tropical forests and in the converted deforested land-cover classes. To gain insight into the ecosystem characteristics of pristine tropical forests, regrowth forests, and cashew plantations, we established an ecosystem monitoring site in Phnom Kulen National Park, Cambodia. Here, we present the first observed datasets at this site of forest inventories, leaf area index, leaf traits of woody species, a fraction of intercepted photosynthetically active radiation, and soil and meteorological conditions. We examined how land-cover change affects the species and functional diversity, stand structure, and soil conditions among the three land-cover classes. We found significant reductions in several ecosystem characteristics, caused by the anthropogenic land cover conversion, which underlines the profound impact land-cover change has on ecosystem productivity, resilience, and functioning in these tropical forest regions. We further investigated relationships between diameters at breast height and tree height, and demonstrated the feasibility of locally updating aboveground biomass estimates using power-law functions. These datasets and findings can contribute to filling data gaps in tropical forest research, addressing global environmental challenges, and supporting sustainable forest management. The datasets are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10146582 (Sovann et al., 2024a) and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10159726 (Sovann et al., 2024b), and future data from the field site will be uploaded on a regular basis to https://zenodo.org/communities/cambodia_ecosystem_data.