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Tropical dry forests (TDFs) are ecosystems with long drought periods, a meantemperature of 25 °C, a mean annual precipitation that ranges from 900 to2000 mm, and that possess a high abundance of deciduous species (treesand lianas). What remains of the original extent of TDFs in the Americasremains highly fragmented and at different levels of ecological succession.It is estimated that one of the main fingerprints left by globalenvironmental and climate change in tropical environments is an increase inliana coverage. Lianas are non-structural elements of the forest canopy thateventually kill their host trees. In this paper we evaluate the use of aterrestrial laser scanner (TLS) in combination with hemisphericalphotographs (HPs) to characterize changes in forest structure as a functionof ecological succession and liana abundance. We deployed a TLS and HPsystem in 28 plots throughout secondary forests of different ages and withdifferent levels of liana abundance. Using a canonical correlationanalysis (CCA), we addressed how the VEGNET, a terrestrial laser scanner, and HPs could predict TDF structure.Likewise, using univariate analyses of correlations, we show how the lianaabundance could affect the prediction of the forest structure. Our resultssuggest that TLSs and HPs can predict the differences in the forest structure atdifferent successional stages but that these differences disappear as lianaabundance increases. Therefore, in well known ecosystems such as thetropical dry forest of Costa Rica, these biases of prediction could beconsidered as structural effects of liana presence. This researchcontributes to the understanding of the potential effects of lianas insecondary dry forests and highlights the role of TLSs combined with HPs inmonitoring structural changes in secondary TDFs

Can terrestrial laser scanners (TLSs) and hemispherical photographs predict tropical dry forest succession with liana abundance?