Tracking a decade of change: insights from long-term monitoring of an old-growth temperate rainforest on Chiloé Island, Chile

Key message 

Southern temperate rainforests harbor exceptional endemic biodiversity and large carbon stocks but remain underrepresented in global monitoring networks. Here, we present a dataset and standardized census protocol from a 1-ha permanent plot in an old-growth temperate rainforest in Chiloé, Chile. The data obtained in two censuses (2014, 2024) reveal that the forest has abundant regeneration but offsets high mortality and biomass accumulation in large trees. This dataset establishes the first long-term demographic baseline for these forests, enabling future censuses to assess how warming and drying trends may alter tree recruitment, growth, and mortality dynamics.

Keywords 
Tree demography; Forest dynamics; Forest succession; Demographic rates

Publication 
Gutiérrez, Á.G., Montero-Silva, F., Gaxiola, A. et al. Tracking a decade of change: insights from long-term monitoring of an old-growth temperate rainforest on Chiloé Island, Chile. Annals of Forest Science (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13595-025-01323-5

Data availability 
The datasets generated during the present study have been published in the data-repository Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17398246), Gutiérrez and Montero-Silva 2025). The available datasets correspond to the following files: permanent_data.csv, census_database2014.csv, census_database2024.csv, quadrant_team2014.csv, quadrant_team2024.csv and spp_names.csv. The variable descriptions are in the variables_names.csv file. Associated metadata is available at: https://metadata-afs.nancy.inra.fr/geonetwork/srv/fre/catalog.search#/metadata/7a3e9aca-9125-4ab3-a072-10b034eb122b, https://zenodo.org/records/17398246.

Handling editor
Irène Gabriel