Welcome to CloudNet

Tropical montane cloud forests (TMCFs) are a unique ecosystem found on tropical mountains where persistent cloud cover forms regularly. These ecosystems play a critical role in biodiversity protection, water resources, and human livelihoods. Yet they remain among the world’s least studied ecosystems and are likely to be exceptionally vulnerable to global change.

CloudNet is an international research coordination network (RCN) initiated in 2012 to provide a collaborative network for the study of TMCFs. The primary purpose of CloudNet is to bring together scientists, student, managers, and educators who are interested in tropical montane cloud forest ecology. 

CloudNet aims to increase our ecological knowledge of TMCFs. Currently, our understanding of TMCFs is constrained by limited cross-site study and methodological compatibility, limited discourse across geographic and disciplinary boundaries, and limited synthesis of current research.

A central theme focused on a ‘syndrome’ characteristic of all TMCFs (i.e. small, stunted and very slow growing forests) will help organize research efforts across tropical regions and investigators, and in so doing, standardize scientific techniques, promote new technologies and interdisciplinary approaches, and synthesize datasets across large scales. Indeed, an international effort is needed as the key drivers of these themes—climate, physiography, and ecological isolation—have their main variation over large distances (e.g. islands vs. mainlands, equatorial vs. subtropics, coastal vs. inland).