How valuable are secondary tropical montane cloud forests in central Veracruz, Mexico? Modeling their potential to supply ecosystem services

The area of secondary forests is increasing throughout the tropics. Secondary forests can supply important ecosystem services (e.g. fuelwood, biodiversity conservation, regulation of the water cycle, soil protection). We apply the process-based forest growth model FORMIND to simulate the regeneration of tropical montane cloud forests in central Veracruz, Mexico, and to study their potential for provision of ecosystem services. We validate simulation results of forest regeneration by comparison with chronosequence data from the study region. We estimate that important structural forest characteristics for the ability of the forest to capture water from clouds and protect the soil (forest height, leaf area index) have recovered after approximately 40 years. In contrast, forest properties which serve as indicators of the similarity of the species composition to old-growth conditions such as the number of large old trees and the proportion of basal area of different tree species groups need 150 and 300, respectively, years to recover. We also analyze the potential of young secondary forests to supply fuelwood. We conclude that the rational management of these forests has the potential to substantially alleviate logging pressure on remaining old-growth forests while at the same time providing important ecosystem services (e.g. soil protection).