Calibrating Tropical Forest Coexistence in Ecosystem Demography Models Using Multi‐Objective Optimization Through Population‐Based Parallel Surrogate Search

Abstract Tropical forest diversity governs forest structures, compositions, and influences the ecosystem response to environmental changes. Better representation of forest diversity in ecosystem demography (ED) models within Earth system models is thus necessary to accurately capture and predict how tropical forests affect Earth system dynamics subject to climate changes. However, achieving forest coexistence in ED models is challenging due to their computational expense and limited understanding of the mechanisms governing forest functional diversity. This study applies the advanced Multi‐Objective Population‐based Parallel Local Surrogate‐assisted search (MOPLS) optimization algorithm to simultaneously calibrate ecosystem fluxes and coexistence of two physiologically distinct tropical forest species in a size‐ and age‐structured ED model with realistic representation of wood harvest. MOPLS exhibits satisfactory model performance, capturing hydrological and biogeochemical dynamics observed in Barro Colorado Island, Panama, and robustly achieving coexistence for the two representative forest species. This demonstrates its effectiveness in calibrating tropical forest coexistence. The optimal solution is applied to investigate the recovery trajectories of forest biomass after various intensities of clear‐cut deforestation. We find that a 20% selective logging can take approximately 40 years for aboveground biomass to return to the initial level. This is due to the slow recovery rate of late successional trees, which only increases by 4% over the 40‐year period. This study lays the foundation to calibrate coexistence in ED models. MOPLS can be an effective tool to help better represent tropical forest diversity in Earth system models and inform forest management practices.