Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Forest Ecology and Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foreco Growth dynamics and productivity of an Eucalyptus grandis plantation under omission of N, P, K Ca and Mg over two crop rotation José Henrique Tertulino Rocha a,b, ⁎ , José Leonardo de Moraes Gonçalves a , Alexandre de Vicente Ferraz c , Daniel Abranches Poiati a , José Carlos Arthur Junior d , Ayeska Hubner a a Forest Science Department, “Luiz de Queiroz” College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo, Piracicaba, SP, Brazil b Agriculture and Forest Engineering College, FAEF, Garça, SP, Brazil c Forestry Science and Research Institute, IPEF, Piracicaba, SP, Brazil d Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Seropédica, RJ, Brazil ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Response type Net primary production Growth seasonality Forest nutrition Fertilizer application ABSTRACT We conducted an experiment where Eucalyptus grandis was grown for two crop rotations (R1, planted in 2004; R2, clear felled and re-established in 2012) with and without N, P, K, and Lime application. The soil of the experimentalsitewasanOxisol.OurgoalwastoidentifythemagnitudeandtypeofresponsetoN,P,K,andlime applications over two crop rotations. We also aimed to identify the role of weather in tree growth dynamics and in the current responses of trees to fertilizer applications. For this, stem growth of fertilized and unfertilized trees was measured monthly, and wood volume and total biomass were measured every 12 months. In the absence of K, the wood volume decreased drastically (approximately 70%), and this effect was observed until the end of R1 and R2. On the other hand, in the absence of N, P, and Lime, the wood volume decreased from 20% to 50% at 2 years of age. This response decreased with age, disappearing at the end of both rotations for N and was approximately -10% for P and Lime. The trees fertilized with all nutrients were highly responsive to weather variation, showing a basal area increment of approximately 1.0 m 2 ha -1 month -1 during the rainy season and valueslessthan0.2m 2 ha -1 month -1 duringthedryseason.TheabsenceofKfertilizationresultedinaslowbut constant growth of approximately 0.2m 2 ha -1 month -1 . During months with high water availability, a large current response of trees to fertilizer application was found. During months with low water availability, a low or no response to fertilizer application was found. These results show that a sequence of months with low water availability decreases the accumulated response of trees to fertilizer application, while the opposite is also true. 1. Introduction Species of the genus Eucalyptus are the most planted trees in Brazil, totalizing 5.7 millions of hectares in the year of 2016 (IBÁ, 2017). The highest productivity in the world is reported for this genus (E. grandis and hybrids between E. urophylla and E. grandis), reaching yields (Mean annual increment – MAI) of around 80 m 3 ha -1 y -1 in the most pro- ductive areas (Stape et al., 2010; Pulito et al., 2015; Binkley et al., 2017). This high productivity is due to the genetic characteristics of the genus, tree breeding, adequate silvicultural techniques and favorable edaphoclimatic conditions (Pallett and Sale, 2004; Gonçalves, 2011; Binkley et al., 2017). Plant spacing, weed control, and fertilizer appli- cation stand out among the applied silvicultural techniques which play an important role on productivity (Gonçalves et al., 2013). Silvicultural techniques can result in two types of responses (Snowdon, 2002). In the present study, we consider response as the difference in terms of tree growth between trees exposed to treated and untreated conditions. Type 1 response is when the treatment causes a temporary enhancement of the current increment of the trees, which is notmaintainedovertime.Type2responseiswhenthetreatmentcauses a long term enhancement in tree growth. Fertilizer application can enhance productivity ranging from 0 to 90% and can result in a type 1 or type 2 responses, depending on the studied nutrient (Laclau et al., 2009; Pulito et al., 2015; Melo et al., 2016). It is well known that under Brazilian conditions, N and K application result in type 1 and type 2 response, respectively (Laclau et al., 2009; Pulito et al., 2015; Battie- Laclau et al., 2016). Besides these two nutrients, little is known about the response type of trees to fertilizer applications. In a broad literature https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2019.05.060 Received 8 January 2019; Received in revised form 22 May 2019; Accepted 23 May 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: rocha.jht@gmail.com (J.H.T. Rocha). Forest Ecology and Management 447 (2019) 158–168 0378-1127/ © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T