Early to intermediate ontogenetic stages of trees are important in forest regeneration. However, these critical life stages are often overlooked due to survey intensity and impracticality and/or disinterest in characterizing early life stage cohorts. This problem is particularly pervasive in mangrove forests where visibility of smaller stature trees may be limited by tidal flooding and younger cohorts are particularly vulnerable to changing hydrologic and biogeochemical conditions driven by climate change. Lacking data on early life stages in mangrove forests makes it difficult to predict ecosystem degradation and inform habitat resilience and restoration in one of the earth's most valuable blue carbon ecosystems. We identify challenges to collecting empirical data on early to intermediate age classes in mangroves and provide solutions to characterizing these cohorts. We emphasize the importance of gathering these data for improved understanding of forest regeneration dynamics and provide multi-scalar solutions to quantify vegetation structure of mangrove forest.

中文翻译：

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考虑红树林恢复和恢复的早期和中期个体发育阶段的挑战和重要性


树木的早期到中期个体发育阶段在森林更新中很重要。然而，由于调查强度和不切实际和/或对描述早期生命阶段队列不感兴趣，这些关键的生命阶段经常被忽视。这个问题在红树林中尤为普遍，那里的矮小树木的能见度可能会受到潮汐洪水的限制，而且年轻的群体特别容易受到气候变化导致的水文和生物地球化学条件变化的影响。由于缺乏红树林早期生命阶段的数据，因此很难预测生态系统退化，也难以为地球上最有价值的蓝碳生态系统之一的栖息地恢复和恢复提供信息。我们确定了收集红树林中早期至中期年龄组的经验数据的挑战，并提供了描述这些群体的解决方案。我们强调收集这些数据以更好地了解森林更新动态的重要性，并提供多标量解决方案来量化红树林的植被结构。