ORCID Profile
0000-0003-2314-590X
Current Organisations
University of St Andrews
,
Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonia Peruana
Does something not look right? The information on this page has been harvested from data sources that may not be up to date. We continue to work with information providers to improve coverage and quality. To report an issue, use the Feedback Form.
Related Links
Publications
Evolutionary heritage influences Amazon tree ecology
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 14-12-2016
Abstract: Lineages tend to retain ecological characteristics of their ancestors through time. However, for some traits, selection during evolutionary history may have also played a role in determining trait values. To address the relative importance of these processes requires large-scale quantification of traits and evolutionary relationships among species. The Amazonian tree flora comprises a high ersity of angiosperm lineages and species with widely differing life-history characteristics, providing an excellent system to investigate the combined influences of evolutionary heritage and selection in determining trait variation. We used trait data related to the major axes of life-history variation among tropical trees (e.g. growth and mortality rates) from 577 inventory plots in closed-canopy forest, mapped onto a phylogenetic hypothesis spanning more than 300 genera including all major angiosperm clades to test for evolutionary constraints on traits. We found significant phylogenetic signal (PS) for all traits, consistent with evolutionarily related genera having more similar characteristics than expected by chance. Although there is also evidence for repeated evolution of pioneer and shade tolerant life-history strategies within independent lineages, the existence of significant PS allows clearer predictions of the links between evolutionary ersity, ecosystem function and the response of tropical forests to global change.
More than 10,000 pre-Columbian earthworks are still hidden throughout Amazonia
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 06-10-2023
Hyperdominance in Amazonian forest carbon cycling
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 28-04-2015
DOI: 10.1038/NCOMMS7857
Abstract: While Amazonian forests are extraordinarily erse, the abundance of trees is skewed strongly towards relatively few ‘hyperdominant’ species. In addition to their ersity, Amazonian trees are a key component of the global carbon cycle, assimilating and storing more carbon than any other ecosystem on Earth. Here we ask, using a unique data set of 530 forest plots, if the functions of storing and producing woody carbon are concentrated in a small number of tree species, whether the most abundant species also dominate carbon cycling, and whether dominant species are characterized by specific functional traits. We find that dominance of forest function is even more concentrated in a few species than is dominance of tree abundance, with only ≈1% of Amazon tree species responsible for 50% of carbon storage and productivity. Although those species that contribute most to biomass and productivity are often abundant, species maximum size is also influential, while the identity and ranking of dominant species varies by function and by region.
Amazon tree dominance across forest strata.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 04-2021
DOI: 10.1038/S41559-021-01418-Y
Abstract: The forests of Amazonia are among the most bio erse plant communities on Earth. Given the immediate threats posed by climate and land-use change, an improved understanding of how this extraordinary bio ersity is spatially organized is urgently required to develop effective conservation strategies. Most Amazonian tree species are extremely rare but a few are common across the region. Indeed, just 227 'hyperdominant' species account for >50% of all in iduals >10 cm diameter at 1.3 m in height. Yet, the degree to which the phenomenon of hyperdominance is sensitive to tree size, the extent to which the composition of dominant species changes with size class and how evolutionary history constrains tree hyperdominance, all remain unknown. Here, we use a large floristic dataset to show that, while hyperdominance is a universal phenomenon across forest strata, different species dominate the forest understory, midstory and canopy. We further find that, although species belonging to a range of phylogenetically dispersed lineages have become hyperdominant in small size classes, hyperdominants in large size classes are restricted to a few lineages. Our results demonstrate that it is essential to consider all forest strata to understand regional patterns of dominance and composition in Amazonia. More generally, through the lens of 654 hyperdominant species, we outline a tractable pathway for understanding the functioning of half of Amazonian forests across vertical strata and geographical locations.
The global abundance of tree palms
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 08-07-2020
DOI: 10.1111/GEB.13123
The global biogeography of tree leaf form and habit
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 23-10-2023
Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition.
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 03-03-2017
Abstract: The extent to which pre-Columbian societies altered Amazonian landscapes is hotly debated. We performed a basin-wide analysis of pre-Columbian impacts on Amazonian forests by overlaying known archaeological sites in Amazonia with the distributions and abundances of 85 woody species domesticated by pre-Columbian peoples. Domesticated species are five times more likely than nondomesticated species to be hyperdominant. Across the basin, the relative abundance and richness of domesticated species increase in forests on and around archaeological sites. In southwestern and eastern Amazonia, distance to archaeological sites strongly influences the relative abundance and richness of domesticated species. Our analyses indicate that modern tree communities in Amazonia are structured to an important extent by a long history of plant domestication by Amazonian peoples.
Compositional response of Amazon forests to climate change
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 08-11-2018
DOI: 10.1111/GCB.14413
Fast demographic traits promote high diversification rates of Amazonian trees
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-03-2014
DOI: 10.1111/ELE.12252
Native diversity buffers against severity of non-native tree invasions
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 23-08-2023
DOI: 10.1038/S41586-023-06440-7
Abstract: Determining the drivers of non-native plant invasions is critical for managing native ecosystems and limiting the spread of invasive species 1,2 . Tree invasions in particular have been relatively overlooked, even though they have the potential to transform ecosystems and economies 3,4 . Here, leveraging global tree databases 5–7 , we explore how the phylogenetic and functional ersity of native tree communities, human pressure and the environment influence the establishment of non-native tree species and the subsequent invasion severity. We find that anthropogenic factors are key to predicting whether a location is invaded, but that invasion severity is underpinned by native ersity, with higher ersity predicting lower invasion severity. Temperature and precipitation emerge as strong predictors of invasion strategy, with non-native species invading successfully when they are similar to the native community in cold or dry extremes. Yet, despite the influence of these ecological forces in determining invasion strategy, we find evidence that these patterns can be obscured by human activity, with lower ecological signal in areas with higher proximity to shipping ports. Our global perspective of non-native tree invasion highlights that human drivers influence non-native tree presence, and that native phylogenetic and functional ersity have a critical role in the establishment and spread of subsequent invasions.
Biased-corrected richness estimates for the Amazonian tree flora
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 23-06-2020
DOI: 10.1038/S41598-020-66686-3
Abstract: Amazonian forests are extraordinarily erse, but the estimated species richness is very much debated. Here, we apply an ensemble of parametric estimators and a novel technique that includes conspecific spatial aggregation to an extended database of forest plots with up-to-date taxonomy. We show that the species abundance distribution of Amazonia is best approximated by a logseries with aggregated in iduals, where aggregation increases with rarity. By averaging several methods to estimate total richness, we confirm that over 15,000 tree species are expected to occur in Amazonia. We also show that using ten times the number of plots would result in an increase to just ~50% of those 15,000 estimated species. To get a more complete s le of all tree species, rigorous field c aigns may be needed but the number of trees in Amazonia will remain an estimate for years to come.
Long-term decline of the Amazon carbon sink
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 03-2015
DOI: 10.1038/NATURE14283
Abstract: Atmospheric carbon dioxide records indicate that the land surface has acted as a strong global carbon sink over recent decades, with a substantial fraction of this sink probably located in the tropics, particularly in the Amazon. Nevertheless, it is unclear how the terrestrial carbon sink will evolve as climate and atmospheric composition continue to change. Here we analyse the historical evolution of the biomass dynamics of the Amazon rainforest over three decades using a distributed network of 321 plots. While this analysis confirms that Amazon forests have acted as a long-term net biomass sink, we find a long-term decreasing trend of carbon accumulation. Rates of net increase in above-ground biomass declined by one-third during the past decade compared to the 1990s. This is a consequence of growth rate increases levelling off recently, while biomass mortality persistently increased throughout, leading to a shortening of carbon residence times. Potential drivers for the mortality increase include greater climate variability, and feedbacks of faster growth on mortality, resulting in shortened tree longevity. The observed decline of the Amazon sink erges markedly from the recent increase in terrestrial carbon uptake at the global scale, and is contrary to expectations based on models.
Hyperdominance in the Amazonian Tree Flora
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 18-10-2013
Abstract: Recent decades have seen a major international effort to inventory tree communities in the Amazon Basin and Guiana Shield (Amazonia), but the vast extent and record ersity of these forests have h ered an understanding of basinwide patterns. To overcome this obstacle, we compiled and standardized species-level data on more than half a million trees in 1170 plots s ling all major lowland forest types to explore patterns of commonness, rarity, and richness. The ~6-million-km 2 Amazonian lowlands were ided into 1° cells, and mean tree density was estimated for each cell by using a loess regression model that included no environmental data but had its basis exclusively in the geographic location of tree plots. A similar model, allied with a bootstrapping exercise to quantify s ling error, was used to generate estimated Amazon-wide abundances of the 4962 valid species in the data set. We estimated the total number of tree species in the Amazon by fitting the mean rank-abundance data to Fisher’s log-series distribution. Our analyses suggest that lowland Amazonia harbors 3.9 × 10 11 trees and ~16,000 tree species. We found 227 “hyperdominant” species (1.4% of the total) to be so common that together they account for half of all trees in Amazonia, whereas the rarest 11,000 species account for just 0.12% of trees. Most hyperdominants are habitat specialists that have large geographic ranges but are only dominant in one or two regions of the basin, and a median of 41% of trees in in idual plots belong to hyperdominants. A disproportionate number of hyperdominants are palms, Myristicaceae, and Lecythidaceae. The finding that Amazonia is dominated by just 227 tree species implies that most biogeochemical cycling in the world’s largest tropical forest is performed by a tiny sliver of its ersity. The causes underlying hyperdominance in these species remain unknown. Both competitive superiority and widespread pre-1492 cultivation by humans are compelling hypotheses that deserve testing. Although the data suggest that spatial models can effectively forecast tree community composition and structure of unstudied sites in Amazonia, incorporating environmental data may yield substantial improvements. An appreciation of how thoroughly common species dominate the basin has the potential to simplify research in Amazonian biogeochemistry, ecology, and vegetation mapping. Such advances are urgently needed in light of the ,000 rare, poorly known, and potentially threatened tree species in the Amazon.
Species Distribution Modelling: Contrasting presence-only models with plot abundance data
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 17-01-2018
DOI: 10.1038/S41598-017-18927-1
Abstract: Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used in ecology and conservation. Presence-only SDMs such as MaxEnt frequently use natural history collections (NHCs) as occurrence data, given their huge numbers and accessibility. NHCs are often spatially biased which may generate inaccuracies in SDMs. Here, we test how the distribution of NHCs and MaxEnt predictions relates to a spatial abundance model, based on a large plot dataset for Amazonian tree species, using inverse distance weighting (IDW). We also propose a new pipeline to deal with inconsistencies in NHCs and to limit the area of occupancy of the species. We found a significant but weak positive relationship between the distribution of NHCs and IDW for 66% of the species. The relationship between SDMs and IDW was also significant but weakly positive for 95% of the species, and sensitivity for both analyses was high. Furthermore, the pipeline removed half of the NHCs records. Presence-only SDM applications should consider this limitation, especially for large bio ersity assessments projects, when they are automatically generated without subsequent checking. Our pipeline provides a conservative estimate of a species’ area of occupancy, within an area slightly larger than its extent of occurrence, compatible to e.g. IUCN red list assessments.
Author Correction: Native diversity buffers against severity of non-native tree invasions
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 26-09-2023
Basin-wide variation in tree hydraulic safety margins predicts the carbon balance of Amazon forests
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 26-04-2023
DOI: 10.1038/S41586-023-05971-3
Abstract: Tropical forests face increasing climate risk 1,2 , yet our ability to predict their response to climate change is limited by poor understanding of their resistance to water stress. Although xylem embolism resistance thresholds (for ex le, $$\\varPsi $$ Ψ 50 ) and hydraulic safety margins (for ex le, HSM 50 ) are important predictors of drought-induced mortality risk 3–5 , little is known about how these vary across Earth’s largest tropical forest. Here, we present a pan-Amazon, fully standardized hydraulic traits dataset and use it to assess regional variation in drought sensitivity and hydraulic trait ability to predict species distributions and long-term forest biomass accumulation. Parameters $$\\varPsi $$ Ψ 50 and HSM 50 vary markedly across the Amazon and are related to average long-term rainfall characteristics. Both $$\\varPsi $$ Ψ 50 and HSM 50 influence the biogeographical distribution of Amazon tree species. However, HSM 50 was the only significant predictor of observed decadal-scale changes in forest biomass. Old-growth forests with wide HSM 50 are gaining more biomass than are low HSM 50 forests. We propose that this may be associated with a growth–mortality trade-off whereby trees in forests consisting of fast-growing species take greater hydraulic risks and face greater mortality risk. Moreover, in regions of more pronounced climatic change, we find evidence that forests are losing biomass, suggesting that species in these regions may be operating beyond their hydraulic limits. Continued climate change is likely to further reduce HSM 50 in the Amazon 6,7 , with strong implications for the Amazon carbon sink.
Evenness mediates the global relationship between forest productivity and richness
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 02-05-2023
Abstract: 1. Bio ersity is an important component of natural ecosystems, with higher species richness often correlating with an increase in ecosystem productivity. Yet, this relationship varies substantially across environments, typically becoming less pronounced at high levels of species richness. However, species richness alone cannot reflect all important properties of a community, including community evenness, which may mediate the relationship between bio ersity and productivity. If the evenness of a community correlates negatively with richness across forests globally, then a greater number of species may not always increase overall ersity and productivity of the system. Theoretical work and local empirical studies have shown that the effect of evenness on ecosystem functioning may be especially strong at high richness levels, yet the consistency of this remains untested at a global scale. 2. Here, we used a dataset of forests from across the globe, which includes composition, biomass accumulation and net primary productivity, to explore whether productivity correlates with community evenness and richness in a way that evenness appears to buffer the effect of richness. Specifically, we evaluated whether low levels of evenness in speciose communities correlate with the attenuation of the richness–productivity relationship. 3. We found that tree species richness and evenness are negatively correlated across forests globally, with highly speciose forests typically comprising a few dominant and many rare species. Furthermore, we found that the correlation between ersity and productivity changes with evenness: at low richness, uneven communities are more productive, while at high richness, even communities are more productive. 4. Synthesis . Collectively, these results demonstrate that evenness is an integral component of the relationship between bio ersity and productivity, and that the attenuating effect of richness on forest productivity might be partly explained by low evenness in speciose communities. Productivity generally increases with species richness, until reduced evenness limits the overall increases in community ersity. Our research suggests that evenness is a fundamental component of bio ersity–ecosystem function relationships, and is of critical importance for guiding conservation and sustainable ecosystem management decisions.
Tree mode of death and mortality risk factors across Amazon forests
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 09-11-2020
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-020-18996-3
Abstract: The carbon sink capacity of tropical forests is substantially affected by tree mortality. However, the main drivers of tropical tree death remain largely unknown. Here we present a pan-Amazonian assessment of how and why trees die, analysing over 120,000 trees representing 3800 species from 189 long-term RAINFOR forest plots. While tree mortality rates vary greatly Amazon-wide, on average trees are as likely to die standing as they are broken or uprooted—modes of death with different ecological consequences. Species-level growth rate is the single most important predictor of tree death in Amazonia, with faster-growing species being at higher risk. Within species, however, the slowest-growing trees are at greatest risk while the effect of tree size varies across the basin. In the driest Amazonian region species-level bioclimatic distributional patterns also predict the risk of death, suggesting that these forests are experiencing climatic conditions beyond their adaptative limits. These results provide not only a holistic pan-Amazonian picture of tree death but large-scale evidence for the overarching importance of the growth–survival trade-off in driving tropical tree mortality.
The Forest Observation System, building a global reference dataset for remote sensing of forest biomass
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 10-10-2019
DOI: 10.1038/S41597-019-0196-1
Abstract: Forest biomass is an essential indicator for monitoring the Earth’s ecosystems and climate. It is a critical input to greenhouse gas accounting, estimation of carbon losses and forest degradation, assessment of renewable energy potential, and for developing climate change mitigation policies such as REDD+, among others. Wall-to-wall mapping of aboveground biomass (AGB) is now possible with satellite remote sensing (RS). However, RS methods require extant, up-to-date, reliable, representative and comparable in situ data for calibration and validation. Here, we present the Forest Observation System (FOS) initiative, an international cooperation to establish and maintain a global in situ forest biomass database. AGB and canopy height estimates with their associated uncertainties are derived at a 0.25 ha scale from field measurements made in permanent research plots across the world’s forests. All plot estimates are geolocated and have a size that allows for direct comparison with many RS measurements. The FOS offers the potential to improve the accuracy of RS-based biomass products while developing new synergies between the RS and ground-based ecosystem research communities.
Unraveling Amazon tree community assembly using Maximum Information Entropy: a quantitative analysis of tropical forest ecology
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 17-02-2023
DOI: 10.1038/S41598-023-28132-Y
Abstract: In a time of rapid global change, the question of what determines patterns in species abundance distribution remains a priority for understanding the complex dynamics of ecosystems. The constrained maximization of information entropy provides a framework for the understanding of such complex systems dynamics by a quantitative analysis of important constraints via predictions using least biased probability distributions. We apply it to over two thousand hectares of Amazonian tree inventories across seven forest types and thirteen functional traits, representing major global axes of plant strategies. Results show that constraints formed by regional relative abundances of genera explain eight times more of local relative abundances than constraints based on directional selection for specific functional traits, although the latter does show clear signals of environmental dependency. These results provide a quantitative insight by inference from large-scale data using cross-disciplinary methods, furthering our understanding of ecological dynamics.
Author Correction: Climatic controls of decomposition drive the global biogeography of forest-tree symbioses
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 28-06-2019
DOI: 10.1038/S41586-019-1342-9
Abstract: In this Letter, a middle initial and additional affiliation have been added for author G. J. Nabuurs two statements have been added to the Supplementary Acknowledgements and a citation to the French National Institute has been added to the Methods see accompanying Author Correction for further details.
Author Correction: Tree mode of death and mortality risk factors across Amazon forests
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 04-01-2021
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-020-20537-X
Abstract: A Correction to this paper has been published: 0.1038/s41467-020-20537-x
Local hydrological conditions influence tree diversity and composition across the Amazon basin
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 13-09-2022
DOI: 10.1111/ECOG.06125
Abstract: Tree ersity and composition in Amazonia are known to be strongly determined by the water supplied by precipitation. Nevertheless, within the same climatic regime, water availability is modulated by local topography and soil characteristics (hereafter referred to as local hydrological conditions), varying from saturated and poorly drained to well‐drained and potentially dry areas. While these conditions may be expected to influence species distribution, the impacts of local hydrological conditions on tree ersity and composition remain poorly understood at the whole Amazon basin scale. Using a dataset of 443 1‐ha non‐flooded forest plots distributed across the basin, we investigate how local hydrological conditions influence 1) tree alpha ersity, 2) the community‐weighted wood density mean (CWM‐wd) – a proxy for hydraulic resistance and 3) tree species composition. We find that the effect of local hydrological conditions on tree ersity depends on climate, being more evident in wetter forests, where ersity increases towards locations with well‐drained soils. CWM‐wd increased towards better drained soils in Southern and Western Amazonia. Tree species composition changed along local soil hydrological gradients in Central‐Eastern, Western and Southern Amazonia, and those changes were correlated with changes in the mean wood density of plots. Our results suggest that local hydrological gradients filter species, influencing the ersity and composition of Amazonian forests. Overall, this study shows that the effect of local hydrological conditions is pervasive, extending over wide Amazonian regions, and reinforces the importance of accounting for local topography and hydrology to better understand the likely response and resilience of forests to increased frequency of extreme climate events and rising temperatures.
Improving corporate disclosure through XBRL
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 12-03-2018
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential for eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) to go beyond static reporting. A taxonomy structure of information is developed for providing a knowledge base and insights for an XBRL taxonomy for integrated reporting (IR). Design Science (DS) research, as a pragmatic exploratory research approach, is embraced to create a new “artefact” and thematic content analysis is used to analyse IR in practice. Using XBRL for IR allows a shift from static and periodic reporting to more relevant and dynamic corporate disclosure for stakeholders, who can navigate and retrieve customised disclosure information according to their interest by exploiting the multidimensionality of IR and overcome some of its criticisms. The bi-dimensional taxonomy structure the authors’ present allows users to navigate disclosure from two different perspectives (content elements (CE) and capitals), display specific themes of interest, and drill down to more detailed information. Because of its evidence-based nature and levels of disaggregation, it provides flexibility to preparers and users of information. Additionally, the findings demonstrate the need to codify sector-specific information for the CE, so that to direct the efforts toward the development of sector-specific taxonomy extensions in developing an XBRL taxonomy for IR. The limitations of DS research are, first, the artefact design and, second, its effects in practice. The first limitation stems from the social actors’ perspective taken into account to develop the taxonomy structure, which derives from the analysis of the reporting practices rather than a pluralistic approach and dialogic engagement. The second limitation relates to the XBRL taxonomy development process because, since the study is limited to the “design” phase being codification and structuring the knowledge base for an XBRL taxonomy, there is a need to develop a taxonomy in XBRL and then apply it in practice to empirically demonstrate the potential and benefits of XBRL in the IR context. The taxonomy structure is targeted at entities interested in designing an XBRL taxonomy for IR. This is a call for academics and practitioners to explore the potential of technology to improve corporate disclosure and open up new projections for resurging themes on intellectual capital (IC) reporting with prospects for IC “fourth-stage” research focused on IC disclosure. This is an interdisciplinary research employing the DS approach, which is rooted in information systems research. It is the first academic study providing pragmatic results for using XBRL in the context of IC and IR.
Sensitivity of South American tropical forests to an extreme climate anomaly
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 09-2023
Taking the pulse of Earth's tropical forests using networks of highly distributed plots
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2021
Does soil pyrogenic carbon determine plant functional traits in Amazon Basin forests?
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 08-2017
Geographic patterns of tree dispersal modes in Amazonia and their ecological correlates
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 24-10-2022
DOI: 10.1111/GEB.13596
Abstract: To investigate the geographic patterns and ecological correlates in the geographic distribution of the most common tree dispersal modes in Amazonia (endozoochory, synzoochory, anemochory and hydrochory). We examined if the proportional abundance of these dispersal modes could be explained by the availability of dispersal agents (disperser‐availability hypothesis) and/or the availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits (resource‐availability hypothesis). Tree‐inventory plots established between 1934 and 2019. Trees with a diameter at breast height (DBH) ≥ 9.55 cm. Amazonia, here defined as the lowland rain forests of the Amazon River basin and the Guiana Shield. We assigned dispersal modes to a total of 5433 species and morphospecies within 1877 tree‐inventory plots across terra‐firme, seasonally flooded, and permanently flooded forests. We investigated geographic patterns in the proportional abundance of dispersal modes. We performed an abundance‐weighted mean pairwise distance (MPD) test and fit generalized linear models (GLMs) to explain the geographic distribution of dispersal modes. Anemochory was significantly, positively associated with mean annual wind speed, and hydrochory was significantly higher in flooded forests. Dispersal modes did not consistently show significant associations with the availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits. A lower dissimilarity in dispersal modes, resulting from a higher dominance of endozoochory, occurred in terra‐firme forests (excluding podzols) compared to flooded forests. The disperser‐availability hypothesis was well supported for abiotic dispersal modes (anemochory and hydrochory). The availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits seems an unlikely explanation for the distribution of dispersal modes in Amazonia. The association between frugivores and the proportional abundance of zoochory requires further research, as tree recruitment not only depends on dispersal vectors but also on conditions that favour or limit seedling recruitment across forest types.
Long-term thermal sensitivity of Earth’s tropical forests
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 22-05-2020
Abstract: A key uncertainty in climate change models is the thermal sensitivity of tropical forests and how this value might influence carbon fluxes. Sullivan et al. measured carbon stocks and fluxes in permanent forest plots distributed globally. This synthesis of plot networks across climatic and biogeographic gradients shows that forest thermal sensitivity is dominated by high daytime temperatures. This extreme condition depresses growth rates and shortens the time that carbon resides in the ecosystem by killing trees under hot, dry conditions. The effect of temperature is worse above 32°C, and a greater magnitude of climate change thus risks greater loss of tropical forest carbon stocks. Nevertheless, forest carbon stocks are likely to remain higher under moderate climate change if they are protected from direct impacts such as clearance, logging, or fires. Science , this issue p. 869
Pan‐tropical prediction of forest structure from the largest trees
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 10-10-2018
DOI: 10.1111/GEB.12803
Abstract: Large tropical trees form the interface between ground and airborne observations, offering a unique opportunity to capture forest properties remotely and to investigate their variations on broad scales. However, despite rapid development of metrics to characterize the forest canopy from remotely sensed data, a gap remains between aerial and field inventories. To close this gap, we propose a new pan‐tropical model to predict plot‐level forest structure properties and biomass from only the largest trees. Pan‐tropical. Early 21st century. Woody plants. Using a dataset of 867 plots distributed among 118 sites across the tropics, we tested the prediction of the quadratic mean diameter, basal area, Lorey's height, community wood density and aboveground biomass (AGB) from the i th largest trees. Measuring the largest trees in tropical forests enables unbiased predictions of plot‐ and site‐level forest structure. The 20 largest trees per hectare predicted quadratic mean diameter, basal area, Lorey's height, community wood density and AGB with 12, 16, 4, 4 and 17.7% of relative error, respectively. Most of the remaining error in biomass prediction is driven by differences in the proportion of total biomass held in medium‐sized trees (50–70 cm diameter at breast height), which shows some continental dependency, with American tropical forests presenting the highest proportion of total biomass in these intermediate‐diameter classes relative to other continents. Our approach provides new information on tropical forest structure and can be used to generate accurate field estimates of tropical forest carbon stocks to support the calibration and validation of current and forthcoming space missions. It will reduce the cost of field inventories and contribute to scientific understanding of tropical forest ecosystems and response to climate change.
Climatic controls of decomposition drive the global biogeography of forest-tree symbioses
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-2019
DOI: 10.1038/S41586-019-1128-0
Abstract: The identity of the dominant root-associated microbial symbionts in a forest determines the ability of trees to access limiting nutrients from atmospheric or soil pools
Evolutionary diversity is associated with wood productivity in Amazonian forests
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 11-11-2019
DOI: 10.1038/S41559-019-1007-Y
Abstract: Higher levels of taxonomic and evolutionary ersity are expected to maximize ecosystem function, yet their relative importance in driving variation in ecosystem function at large scales in erse forests is unknown. Using 90 inventory plots across intact, lowland, terra firme, Amazonian forests and a new phylogeny including 526 angiosperm genera, we investigated the association between taxonomic and evolutionary metrics of ersity and two key measures of ecosystem function: aboveground wood productivity and biomass storage. While taxonomic and phylogenetic ersity were not important predictors of variation in biomass, both emerged as independent predictors of wood productivity. Amazon forests that contain greater evolutionary ersity and a higher proportion of rare species have higher productivity. While climatic and edaphic variables are together the strongest predictors of productivity, our results show that the evolutionary ersity of tree species in erse forest stands also influences productivity. As our models accounted for wood density and tree size, they also suggest that additional, unstudied, evolutionarily correlated traits have significant effects on ecosystem function in tropical forests. Overall, our pan-Amazonian analysis shows that greater phylogenetic ersity translates into higher levels of ecosystem function: tropical forest communities with more distantly related taxa have greater wood productivity.
Confronting ethical challenges in long-term research programs in the tropics
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2021
Related Organisations
University Of St Andrews
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Related Funding Activities
No related grants have been discovered for Eurídice Nora Honorio Coronado.