Vincent de Leijster

91 Ecosystem services trajectories in coffee agroforestry in Colombia over 40 years 5 5.2.3.2 Vegetation assessment Within the plots, we identified all trees which had diameter at breast height (DBH) >5cm to the species level and also plants of the genus Musa to calculate tree species richness, tree density and Musa density (all species in appendix Table A5-2). For each individual tree we measured DBH, and height using a Nikon Forestry Hypsometer, to calculate basal area. We asked the farm owner or manager when the tree was planted to obtain an estimate of the age of the individual trees. We recorded for each tree the presence of four epiphyte groups; bromeliads, lichens, ferns and bryophytes, following Goodall et al. (2015), as a coursemeasure for epiphyte richness. Canopy cover was measured on nine locations evenly distributed in the plot in four cardinal directions using a convex spherical densiometer (Korhonen et al., 2006). All the coffee plants within the plot were counted to calculate coffee plant density. For six randomly selected coffee plants we measured the total height and stem diameter at 15 cm height; we also counted their number of berry-bearing branches and for six of these branches the number of berries. Following Cerda et al. (2017), the average number of berries per branch was multiplied by the number of productive branches to obtain the coffee plant productivity (see 3.4.4). Then we collected 100 ripe berries from the plot, ten berries from ten different coffee plants. The berries were examined for infestation holes of the coffee berry borer, giving a percentage of infested berries. The hundred berries were weighted to obtain the fresh weight, and the berries were then peeled to remove the pulp (mesocarp) and left in water to ferment for 24 h. Floating berries were removed, following local coffee farmers’ practice, as this indicates that the beans have defects (café pasilla). The remaining beans were then oven-dried for 24 h and weighted to obtain dry weight. The ratio between fresh weight and dry weight was used as an indicator for physical coffee bean quality. Another fifteen coffee plants were examined to assess the damage caused by leaf cutter ants (genus Atta, local name hormiga arriera). For each coffee plant we assessed the extent of plant and leaf damage using five categories: no damage (0), <5% damage (1), 5-20% damage (2), 20-50% damage (3), and >50% damage (4). 5.2.3.3 Soil properties In each plot three sub-samples of the upper soil layer (0-20 cm) were taken with a minimum distance of 1 m from a coffee plant or tree. The sub-samples were then mixed and sent as one sample to the lab (Multilab Agroanalítica, Chinchiná, Colombia). In the lab we measured total N (calculated using a regression equation with soil organic matter for the study region;