Yadvinder Malhi

The density of wood is a key indicator of trees’ carbon investment strategies, impacting productivity and carbon storage. Despite its importance, the global variation in wood density and its environmental controls remain poorly understood, preventing accurate predictions of global forest carbon stocks. Here, we analyze information from 1.1 million forest inventory plots alongside wood density data from 10,703 tree species to create a spatially-explicit understanding of the global wood density distribution and its drivers. Our findings reveal a pronounced latitudinal gradient, with wood in tropical dry forests being up to twice as dense as that in boreal forests. In both angiosperms and gymnosperms, temperature and water availability emerged as the primary factors influencing the variation in wood density globally. This indicates similar environmental filters and evolutionary adaptations among distinct plant groups, underscoring the essential role of abiotic factors in determining wood density in forest ecosystems. Additionally, our study highlights the prominent role of disturbance, such as human modification and fire risk, in influencing wood density at more local scales. Factoring in the spatial variation of wood density notably changes the estimates of forest carbon stocks, leading to differences of up to 21% within biomes. Therefore, our research contributes to a deeper understanding of terrestrial biomass distribution and how environmental changes and disturbances impact forest ecosystems.

Trees are pivotal to global biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people, yet accelerating global changes threaten global tree diversity, making accurate species extinction risk assessments necessary. To identify species that require expert-based re-evaluation, we assess exposure to change in six anthropogenic threats over the last two decades for 32,090 tree species. We estimated that over half (54.2%) of the assessed species have been exposed to increasing threats. Only 8.7% of these species are considered threatened by the IUCN Red List, whereas they include more than half of the Data Deficient species (57.8%). These findings suggest a substantial underestimation of threats and associated extinction risk for tree species in current assessments. We also map hotspots of tree species exposed to rapidly changing threats around the world. Our data-driven approach can strengthen the efforts going into …

Amazonia’s floodplain system is the largest and most biodiverse on Earth. Although forests are crucial to the ecological integrity of floodplains, our understanding of their species composition and how this may differ from surrounding forest types is still far too limited, particularly as changing inundation regimes begin to reshape floodplain tree communities and the critical ecosystem functions they underpin. Here we address this gap by taking a spatially explicit look at Amazonia-wide patterns of tree-species turnover and ecological specialization of the region’s floodplain forests. We show that the majority of Amazonian tree species can inhabit floodplains, and about a sixth of Amazonian tree diversity is ecologically specialized on floodplains. The degree of specialization in floodplain communities is driven by regional flood patterns, with the most compositionally differentiated floodplain forests located centrally within …

Sustaining yields for smallholder perennial agriculture under a rapidly changing climate regime may require consideration of landscape features and on-farm management decisions in tandem. Optimising landscape and management may not be possible for maximising yields in any one year but maintaining heterogeneous landscapes could be an important climate adaptation strategy. In this study, we observed elevation, forest patch and shade management gradients affecting smallholder coffee (Coffea arabica) yields in a ‘normal’ year versus the 2015/16 El Niño. We generally found a benefit to yields from having leguminous shade trees and low canopy openness, while maintaining diverse shade or varying canopy openness had more complex influences during a climate shock. The two years of observed climate shock were dominated by either drought or high temperatures, with yield responses generally …

Soil nutrients can limit productivity on highly weathered soils, but vegetation can adopt a range of strategies to maintain productivity under low nutrient supply. Using a full nutrient flux approach, we examine nutrient use strategies across nine old-growth and logged lowland moist tropical forests in Malaysian Borneo. Soil nutrient availability was a weak predictor of productivity. We explored the reasons for this by examining the vegetation biogeochemical cycles of five key macro-and micronutrients. For nitrogen (N), we found very little evidence of nutrient limitation. Four nutrients showed evidence of shifting strategies under limitation, with clear evidence for quantifiable thresholds below which compensation strategies were invoked and contrasting resource optimization strategies employed for each nutrient. For potassium (K), enhanced leaf resorption was the primary strategy for coping with supply limitation. For calcium, shifting stoichiometry was the primary strategy. For phosphorus (P), a combination of both enhanced resorption and shifting stoichiometry was observed. The strongest relationships were found for P and K, with old-growth forests at this site showing some limitation and logged forests having sufficient nutrient supply. This study reveals the potential of nutrient flux approaches to describe the multifaceted and non-linear relationship between soil nutrient supply and uptake, and biomass productivity.

Utilizing terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and three-dimensional modeling, this study quantitatively assessed the woody surface areas of 2161 trees across ecosystems encompassing both tropical and temperate forests. TLS enables precise measurement of tree structures at unprecedented scales. This research builds on theoretical scaling relationships with empirical data, significantly refining our understanding of tree woody surface area. Key findings indicate that direct measurements diverge from theoretical predictions, particularly in the finer branch structures, suggesting modifications to existing allometric models might be necessary. This integration of direct measurements with TLS not only challenges established theories but also enhances our capability to accurately model tree surface area, which is key for understanding forest carbon dynamics and metabolic scaling in ecological systems.

Aim Amazonia hosts more tree species from numerous evolutionary lineages, both young and ancient, than any other biogeographic region. Previous studies have shown that tree lineages colonized multiple edaphic environments and dispersed widely across Amazonia, leading to a hypothesis, which we test, that lineages should not be strongly associated with either geographic regions or edaphic forest types. Location Amazonia. Taxon Angiosperms (Magnoliids; Monocots; Eudicots). Methods Data for the abundance of 5082 tree species in 1989 plots were combined with a mega‐phylogeny. We applied evolutionary ordination to assess how phylogenetic composition varies across Amazonia. We used variation partitioning and Moran's eigenvector maps (MEM) to test and quantify the separate and joint contributions of spatial and environmental variables to explain the phylogenetic composition of plots. We …

Leaf litter decomposition is a major component of nutrient cycling which depends on the quality and quantity of the leaf material. Ash trees (Fraxinus excelsior, decay time ∼ 0.4 years) are declining throughout Europe due to a fungal pathogen (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus), which is likely to alter biochemical cycling across the continent. The ecological impact of losing species with fast decomposing leaves is not well quantified. In this study we examine how decomposition of three leaf species with varying decomposition rates including ash, sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus, decay time ∼ 1.4 years), and beech (Fagus sylvatica, decay time ∼ 6.8 years) differ in habitats with and without ash as the dominant overstorey species. Ten plots (40 m × 40 m) were set up in five locations representing ash dominated and non-ash dominated habitats. In each plot mesh bags (30 cm × 30 cm, 0.5 mm aperture) with a single leaf …

Respiration by trees stems constitutes a substantial proportion of autotrophic respiration in forested ecosystems and has been estimated to contribute 12–25% of total ecosystem respiration, yet little is known about its associated drivers at different spatial scales. Stems are the largest contributor to forest biomass and so the respiratory consumption of stems has the potential to considerably affect carbon budgets in forest communities. As logged and degraded forests are fast becoming the most dominant land-use type throughout the tropics, it is also important to contextualise stem respiration over land use gradients. In this study we quantified stem respiration at individual tree and plot scales in nine 1-ha plots over a gradient of heavily logged to old-growth forest in Malaysian Borneo. We investigated how logging intensity, forest structure, plant functional traits, and soil chemistry influence stem respiration in logged and …

Data for scientific paper: Emergency policies are not enough to resolve Amazonia’s fire crises. - ORA - Oxford University Research Archive Logos Header links Search History Bookmarks 0 New Search Collections About Deposit Help Footer links Policies Disclaimer Privacy Policy Cookies Accessibility Statement Copyright API Contact Skip to main NEW SEARCH Collections About Deposit HELP 0 Back to Search CONTACT Name Email Comment Send message Actions Access Document Authors/Creators Funding Bibliographic Details Item Description Terms of Use Metrics Export BibTeX EndNote RefWorks CC0 version of this metadata Dataset icon Dataset Data for scientific paper: Emergency policies are not enough to resolve Amazonia’s fire crises. Documentation: Datasets of observed and predicted fire counts for the Brazilian Amazon from 2012 to 2021. Separate datasets for deforestation, pasture and forest …

A key challenge for ecological science is to understand how biodiversity loss is changing ecosystem structure and function at scales relevant for policy1. Almost all biodiversity metrics are challenging to disaggregate into ecosystem functions, in particular animal-mediated functions such as pollination, seed and nutrient dispersal, and predation. Here, we adopt an ecosystem energetics approach2 as a physically meaningful method of translating animal species composition into a suite of ecosystem functions. We quantify historical changes to energy flows through mammal-and bird-mediated ecosystem functions across sub-Saharan Africa. In total, trophic energy flows have decreased by over one-third, with functions performed by megafauna in particular collapsing outside protected areas. The pattern of decreasing function varies by biome, driven by arboreal birds and primates in forests, terrestrial herbivores in grassy systems, and burrowing mammals in arid systems. Compared to other biodiversity metrics, an energetics approach highlights the ecological importance of smaller animals and keystone species. The results can help practitioners conserve and restore functionally diverse, energetically intact ecosystems across land uses and biomes. By relating biodiversity intactness to energy and material flows, ecosystem energetics can also advance efforts to set local, regional or planetary boundaries3 for biodiversity loss.

Numerous studies have shown reduced performance in plants that are surrounded by neighbours of the same species,, a phenomenon known as conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD). A long-held ecological hypothesis posits that CNDD is more pronounced in tropical than in temperate forests,, which increases community stabilization, species coexistence and the diversity of local tree species,. Previous analyses supporting such a latitudinal gradient in CNDD, have suffered from methodological limitations related to the use of static data, –. Here we present a comprehensive assessment of latitudinal CNDD patterns using dynamic mortality data to estimate species-site-specific CNDD across 23 sites. Averaged across species, we found that stabilizing CNDD was present at all except one site, but that average stabilizing CNDD was not stronger toward the tropics. However, in tropical tree communities …

The functional stability of ecosystems depends greatly on interspecific differences in responses to environmental perturbation. However, responses to perturbation are not necessarily invariant among populations of the same species, so intraspecific variation in responses might also contribute. Such inter-population response diversity has recently been shown to occur spatially across species ranges, but we lack estimates of the extent to which individual populations across an entire community might have perturbation responses that vary through time. We assess this using 524 taxa that have been repeatedly surveyed for the effects of tropical forest logging at a focal landscape in Sabah, Malaysia. Just 39 % of taxa - all with non-significant responses to forest degradation - had invariant responses. All other taxa (61 %) showed significantly different responses to the same forest degradation gradient across surveys, with 6 % of taxa responding to forest degradation in opposite directions across multiple surveys. Individual surveys had low power (< 80 %) to determine the correct direction of response to forest degradation for one-fifth of all taxa. Recurrent rounds of logging disturbance increased the prevalence of intra-population response diversity, while uncontrollable environmental variation and/or turnover of intraspecific phenotypes generated variable responses in at least 44 % of taxa. Our results show that the responses of individual species to local environmental perturbations are remarkably flexible, likely providing an unrealised boost to the stability of disturbed habitats such as logged tropical forests.

Trees structure the Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystem, tropical forests. The vast number of tree species presents a formidable challenge to understanding these forests, including their response to environmental change, as very little is known about most tropical tree species. A focus on the common species may circumvent this challenge. Here we investigate abundance patterns of common tree species using inventory data on 1,003,805 trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm across 1,568 locations, , , , – in closed-canopy, structurally intact old-growth tropical forests in Africa, Amazonia and Southeast Asia. We estimate that 2.2%, 2.2% and 2.3% of species comprise 50% of the tropical trees in these regions, respectively. Extrapolating across all closed-canopy tropical forests, we estimate that just 1,053 species comprise half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm. Despite …

Tropical forests dominate terrestrial photosynthesis, yet there are major contradictions in our understanding due to a lack of field studies, especially outside the tropical Americas. A recent field study indicated that West African forests have among the highest forests gross primary productivity (GPP) yet observed, contradicting models that rank them lower than Amazonian forests. Here, we explore possible reasons for this data-model mismatch. We found the in situ GPP measurements higher than multiple global GPP products at the studied sites in Ghana. The underestimation of GPP by models largely disappears when a standard photosynthesis model is informed by local field-measured values of (a) fractional absorbed photosynthetic radiation (fAPAR), and (b) photosynthetic traits. Satellites systematically underestimate fAPAR in the tropics due to cloud contamination issues. The study highlights the potential widespread underestimation of tropical forests GPP and carbon cycling and hints at the ways forward for model and input data improvement.

Improving tropical forest biomass predictions can accurately value tropical forests for their ecosystem services and establish confidence in carbon trading schemes such as REDD+. Optical remote sensing estimates of tropical forest biomass have produced spatially contradictory results that differ from ground plot biomass data. Recently, the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar was activated on the international space station (ISS) to improve biomass predictions by providing detailed 3D forest structure and height data. However, there is still debate on how best to predict tropical forest biomass using GEDI data. Here we compare GEDI predicted biomass to 2,102 tropical forest biomass plots and find that adding a remotely sensed (RS) trait map of LMA (Leaf Mass per Area) significantly (P<0.001) improves field biomass predictions, but by only a small amount (r2=0.01). However, it may also help reduce the bias of the residuals because, for instance, there was a negative relationship between both LMA (r2 of 0.34) and % P (r2=0.31) and residuals. This improvement in predictability corresponds with measurements from 523 individual trees where LMA predicts Diameter at Breast height (DBH) (the critical measurement underlying plot biomass) with an r2=0.04, and spectroscopy (400-1075 nm) predicts DBH with an r2=0.01. Adding environmental datasets may offer further improvements and max temperature (Tmax) predicts Amazonian biomass residuals with an r2 of 0.76 (N=66). Finally, for a network of net primary production (NPP) and gross primary production (GPP) plots (N=21), RS traits are better at predicting fluxes than …

Tropical forests dominate terrestrial photosynthesis, yet there are major contradictions in our understanding due to a lack of field studies, especially outside the tropical Americas. A recent field study indicated that West African forests have among the highest forests gross primary productivity (GPP) yet observed, contradicting models that rank them lower than Amazonian forests. Here, we explore possible reasons for this data-model mismatch. We found the in situ GPP measurements higher than multiple global GPP products at the studied sites in Ghana. The underestimation of GPP by models largely disappears when a standard photosynthesis model is informed by local field-measured values of (a) fractional absorbed photosynthetic radiation (fAPAR), and (b) photosynthetic traits. Satellites systematically underestimate fAPAR in the tropics due to cloud contamination issues. The study highlights the potential widespread underestimation of tropical forests GPP and carbon cycling and hints at the ways forward for model and input data improvement.Related manuscriptThe recent field study mentioned above is a manuscript currently accepted by Nature Communications (manuscript id NCOMMS-23-37419), which is available as a preprint https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-3136892/v1Codes and data availabilityAll data and codes underlying the study are currently shared via Github (link here) which will be made available through Zenodo upon acceptance.

The distribution of forest and savanna biomes and the role of resources (climate and soil) and disturbances (fire and herbivory) in determining tree-grass dynamics remains elusive and variable across geographies. This is especially problematic in Indian savannas which have been historically misclassified as degraded forests and are targeted for tree-planting. Here, we examine biome distribution and determinants through the lens of tree cover across India. Our analyses reveal four distinct zones of differing tree cover, with intermediate zones containing savanna vegetation. Rainfall seasonality determines maximum possible tree cover non-linearly. Once rainfall seasonality is factored out, soil sand fraction and topography partially explain residual variation of tree cover. High domestic livestock herbivory and other anthropogenic pressures reduce tree cover. Lastly, lack of detectable fires precludes robust conclusions about the relationship between fire and tree cover. By considering these environmental drivers in restoration planning, we can improve upon simplistic tree planting initiatives that may be detrimental to Indian savannas.

Contemporary economic development has led to dramatic decline of the natural world according to a wide range of metrics. There is also powerful evidence and growing recognition that this decline matters—not only because of the intrinsic value of Earth’s biodiversity, but also because the degradation of the web of life threatens human well-being today, social and economic progress, and even the future of our civilization. A widespread diagnosis of this predicament is that the value and importance of the natural world is not sufficiently accounted for in economic or other decision-making processes, and that bringing nature into decision-making provides the potential for a systemic solution to this challenge. Recent developments and statements have raised awareness of the biodiversity crisis, resulting in high-level calls to ‘bend the curve’of biodiversity loss within a decade, and to create nature-positive economies …

Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, and magnesium concentrations in woody tissue are poorly documented, but are necessary for understanding whole‐tree nutrient use and storage. Here, we report how wood macronutrient concentrations vary radially and along the length of a tree for 10 tropical tree species in Sabah, Malaysia. Bark nutrient concentrations were consistently high: 2.9–13.7 times greater than heartwood depending on the nutrient. In contrast, within the wood both the radial (sapwood vs. heartwood) and vertical (trunk bottom vs. trunk middle) variation was modest. Higher concentrations in sapwood relative to heartwood provide empirical support for wood nutrient resorption during sapwood senescence. Dipterocarp species showed resorption rates of 25.3 ± 7.1% (nitrogen), 62.7 ± 11.9% (phosphorus), and 56.2 ± 12.5% (potassium), respectively, while non‐dipterocarp species showed …

Above‐ground biomass (AGB) is an important metric used to quantify the mass of carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystems. For forests, this is routinely estimated at the plot scale (typically 1 ha) using inventory measurements and allometry. In recent years, terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) has appeared as a disruptive technology that can generate a more accurate assessment of tree and plot scale AGB; however, operationalising TLS methods has had to overcome a number of challenges. One such challenge is the segmentation of individual trees from plot level point clouds that are required to estimate woody volume, this is often done manually (e.g. with interactive point cloud editing software) and can be very time consuming. Here we present TLS2trees, an automated processing pipeline and set of Python command line tools that aims to redress this processing bottleneck. TLS2trees consists of existing and new …

Indigenous societies are known to have occupied the Amazon basin for more than 12,000 years, but the scale of their influence on Amazonian forests remains uncertain. We report the discovery, using LIDAR (light detection and ranging) information from across the basin, of 24 previously undetected pre-Columbian earthworks beneath the forest canopy. Modeled distribution and abundance of large-scale archaeological sites across Amazonia suggest that between 10,272 and 23,648 sites remain to be discovered and that most will be found in the southwest. We also identified 53 domesticated tree species significantly associated with earthwork occurrence probability, likely suggesting past management practices. Closed-canopy forests across Amazonia are likely to contain thousands of undiscovered archaeological sites around which pre-Columbian societies actively modified forests, a discovery that opens …

English. The ‘pure’effect of aridity on photosynthetic and water-transport strategies is not easy to discern because of large-scale correlations between precipitation and temperature. We analyse traits collected along an aridity gradient in Ghana, West Africa, that shows very little temperature variation, in an attempt to disentangle thermal and hydraulic influences on plant traits. Theoretical predictions of the variation of key plant traits along the gradient are tested with field measurements. Most photosynthetic traits show trends consistent with theoretical predictions, including higher photosynthetic rates in the drier sites, and an association of higher photosynthetic rates with greater respiration rates and greater water transport. Hydraulic and leaf-economic traits show less consistency with previous theories, however. In particular the relationship between the sapwood-to-leaf-area ratio (AS/AL) and potential specific hydraulic conductance (Kp) is found to differ from that shown in a global dataset. Nonetheless, the link between photosynthesis and water transport holds: species with both higher AS/AL and Kp (implying greater water transport)(predominantly deciduous species found in drier sites) tend to have both higher photosynthetic capacity, and lower leaf-internal CO2, than others. These results indicate that aridity is a primary driver of the spatial pattern of photosynthetic traits, while plants show a greater diversity of water-transport strategies to support higher photosynthetic rate in arid environments.

In the high Arctic, plant community species composition generally responds slowly to climate warming, whereas less is known about the community functional trait responses and consequences for ecosystem functioning. The slow species turnover and large distribution ranges of many Arctic plant species suggest a significant role of intraspecific trait variability in functional responses to climate change. Here we compare taxonomic and functional community compositional responses to a long‐term (17‐year) warming experiment in Svalbard, Norway, replicated across three major high Arctic habitats shaped by topography and contrasting snow regimes. We observed taxonomic compositional changes in all plant communities over time. Still, responses to experimental warming were minor and most pronounced in the drier habitats with relatively early snowmelt timing and long growing seasons (Cassiope and Dryas …

Aim Andean montane forests are biodiversity hotspots and large carbon stores and they provide numerous ecosystem services. Following land abandonment after centuries of forest clearing for agriculture in the Andes, there is an opportunity for forest recovery. Field‐based studies show that forests do not always recover. However, large‐scale and long‐term knowledge of recovery dynamics of Andean forests remains scarce. This paper analyses tropical montane forest recovery trajectories over a 15‐year time frame at the landscape and tropical Andean scale to inform restoration planning. Methods We first detect “potential recovery” as areas that have experienced a forest transition between 2000 and 2005. Then, we use Landsat time series analysis of the normalized difference water index (NDWI) to classify four “realized recovery” trajectories (“ongoing”, “arrested”, “disrupted” and “no recovery”) based on a …

There is a major funding gap for delivering the UK’s nature recovery ambitions, including meeting the national and international ‘30x30’target (30% of land protected and managed for nature by 2030). This work aimed to investigate the potential revenue that could be generated over the next ten years through purchase of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) offsets by developers in Oxfordshire, and the extent to which this could contribute to the estimated costs of nature recovery.We compare potential BNG revenue with the costs of creating sufficient areas of semi-natural habitats in strategic locations (eg within Oxfordshire’s Nature Recovery Network) to meet the 30x30 target, and maintaining those habitats for 30 years. These costs are estimated at£ 800 million, but this excludes the costs of protecting and monitoring the sites, and any additional costs for organisations that wish to purchase land or compensate landowners for lost opportunity costs. Also, these are not the full costs of nature recovery in its broadest sense, as they do not take account of the cost of restoring species populations to sustainable levels. In particular, this analysis does not consider the cost of recovering any species and habitats lost as a result of the development that gives rise to the BNG revenue, ie it is assumed that the compensatory habitats created through BNG will successfully replace those lost and will prevent any loss of associated species. The estimates are simply intended to help organisations involved in nature recovery to understand the potential size of the BNG market, to inform future investment plans.

For more than three decades, major efforts in sampling and analyzing tree diversity in South America have focused almost exclusively on trees with stems of at least 10 and 2.5 cm diameter, showing highest species diversity in the wetter western and northern Amazon forests. By contrast, little attention has been paid to patterns and drivers of diversity in the largest canopy and emergent trees, which is surprising given these have dominant ecological functions. Here, we use a machine learning approach to quantify the importance of environmental factors and apply it to generate spatial predictions of the species diversity of all trees (dbh ≥ 10 cm) and for very large trees (dbh ≥ 70 cm) using data from 243 forest plots (108,450 trees and 2832 species) distributed across different forest types and biogeographic regions of the Brazilian Amazon. The diversity of large trees and of all trees was significantly …

Determining the drivers of non-native plant invasions is critical for managing native ecosystems and limiting the spread of invasive species,. Tree invasions in particular have been relatively overlooked, even though they have the potential to transform ecosystems and economies,. Here, leveraging global tree databases, –, we explore how the phylogenetic and functional diversity 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 diversity, with higher diversity 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 …

Using 2.046 botanically-inventoried tree plots across the largest tropical forest on Earth, we mapped tree species-diversity and tree species-richness at 0.1-degree resolution, and investigated drivers for diversity and richness. Using only location, stratified by forest type, as predictor, our spatial model, to the best of our knowledge, provides the most accurate map of tree diversity in Amazonia to date, explaining approximately 70% of the tree diversity and species-richness. Large soil-forest combinations determine a significant percentage of the variation in tree species-richness and tree alpha-diversity in Amazonian forest-plots. We suggest that the size and fragmentation of these systems drive their large-scale diversity patterns and hence local diversity. A model not using location but cumulative water deficit, tree density, and temperature seasonality explains 47% of the tree species-richness in the terra-firme forest in …

R code - Global chocolate supply is limited by insufficient pollination - ORA - Oxford University Research Archive Logos Header links Search History Bookmarks 0 New Search About Deposit Help Footer links Policies Disclaimer Privacy Policy Cookies Accessibility Statement Copyright API Contact Skip to main NEW SEARCH About Deposit HELP 0 Back to Search CONTACT Name Email Comment Send message Actions Authors/Creators Bibliographic Details Item Description Related Items Terms of Use Metrics Export BibTeX EndNote RefWorks CC0 version of this metadata Dataset icon Dataset R code - Global chocolate supply is limited by insufficient pollination Documentation: R code for the manuscript 'Global chocolate supply is limited by insufficient pollination' Actions Email Send the bibliographic details of this record to your email address. Your Email Please enter the email address that the record information …

Logged and structurally degraded tropical forests are fast becoming one of the most prevalent land-use types throughout the tropics and are routinely assumed to be a net carbon sink because they experience rapid rates of tree regrowth. Yet this assumption is based on forest biomass inventories that record carbon stock recovery but fail to account for the simultaneous losses of carbon from soil and necromass. Here, we used forest plots and an eddy covariance tower to quantify and partition net ecosystem CO2 exchange in Malaysian Borneo, a region that is a hot spot for deforestation and forest degradation. Our data represent the complete carbon budget for tropical forests measured throughout a logging event and subsequent recovery and found that they constitute a substantial and persistent net carbon source. Consistent with existing literature, our study showed a significantly greater woody biomass gain …

Foliar traits such as specific leaf area (SLA), leaf nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations play an important role in plant economic strategies and ecosystem functioning. Various global maps of these foliar traits have been generated using statistical upscaling approaches based on in-situ trait observations. Here, we intercompare such global upscaled foliar trait maps at 0.5° spatial resolution (six maps for SLA, five for N, three for P), categorize the upscaling approaches used to generate them, and evaluate the maps with trait estimates from a global database of vegetation plots (sPlotOpen). We disentangled the contributions from different plant functional types (PFTs) to the upscaled maps and calculated a top-of-canopy-weighted mean (TWM) and the community-weighted mean (CWM) of sPlotOpen trait estimates. We found that the global foliar trait maps of SLA and N differ drastically and fall into two groups that are almost uncorrelated (for P only maps from one group were available). The primary factor explaining the differences between these groups is the use of PFT information combined with land cover products in one group while the other group relied only on environmental predictors. The impact of using TWM or CWM on spatial patterns is considerably smaller than that of including PFT and land cover information. The maps that used PFT and land cover information exhibit considerable similarities in spatial patterns that are strongly driven by land cover. The maps not using PFTs show a lower level of similarity and tend to be strongly driven by individual environmental variables. Overall, the maps using PFT and land cover information …

1. Biodiversity 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 biodiversity 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 diversity 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 …

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase …

The critical temperature beyond which photosynthetic machinery in tropical trees begins to fail averages approximately 46.7 °C (Tcrit). However, it remains unclear whether leaf temperatures experienced by tropical vegetation approach this threshold or soon will under climate change. Here we found that pantropical canopy temperatures independently triangulated from individual leaf thermocouples, pyrgeometers and remote sensing (ECOSTRESS) have midday peak temperatures of approximately 34 °C during dry periods, with a long high-temperature tail that can exceed 40 °C. Leaf thermocouple data from multiple sites across the tropics suggest that even within pixels of moderate temperatures, upper canopy leaves exceed Tcrit 0.01% of the time. Furthermore, upper canopy leaf warming experiments (+2, 3 and 4 °C in Brazil, Puerto Rico and Australia, respectively) increased leaf temperatures non-linearly …

Understanding what controls global leaf type variation in trees is crucial for comprehending their role in terrestrial ecosystems, including carbon, water and nutrient dynamics. Yet our understanding of the factors influencing forest leaf types remains incomplete, leaving us uncertain about the global proportions of needle-leaved, broadleaved, evergreen and deciduous trees. To address these gaps, we conducted a global, ground-sourced assessment of forest leaf-type variation by integrating forest inventory data with comprehensive leaf form (broadleaf vs needle-leaf) and habit (evergreen vs deciduous) records. We found that global variation in leaf habit is primarily driven by isothermality and soil characteristics, while leaf form is predominantly driven by temperature. Given these relationships, we estimate that 38% of global tree individuals are needle-leaved evergreen, 29% are broadleaved evergreen, 27% are …

This data package includes two folders: Litterfall and Branchfall. The Litterfall folder includes three files: "GEM_Lambir_Hills_Litterfall_Mass_Flux_Data_2008_to_2010.csv" includes the litterfall data, the "GEM_Lambir_Hills_Litterfall_Metadata.xlx" includes the descripion of the columns in the data file, and the PDF file "GEM_Lambir_Hills_Litterfall_Methods_Description" includes a brief description of the litterfall sampling methods. The Branchfall Folder includes four files: the "GEM_Lambir_Hills_Branchfall_Data_2009_to_2010.csv" file includes the branchfall data, the "GEM_Lambir_Hills_Branchfall_Metadata_2009_to_2010.xlsx" includes the description of the columns in the csv data file, the "GEM_Lambir_Hills_Branchfall_Methods_Description.pdf" includes a brief description of the branchfall collection methods, and the "GEM_Lambir_Hills_Branchfall_Data_Metadata_Methods_TransectSums.xlx" includes data, metadata, methods description, and a 'TransectsSums' tab where the reader can find the sum of the branchfall data in each transect Litterfall and Branchfall data were collected to quantify canopy productivity and net primary productivity allocated to branch turnover, which are components of the total net primary productivity and ecosystem carbon budget. The methods follow the Global Ecosystems Monitoring (GEM) protocols (see gem.tropicalforests.ox.ac.uk). The data collection took place from 2008 to 2010 in two 1-ha GEM plots in Lambir Hills National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia, within the Lambir 52-ha ForestGEO plots. One of the plots was located on clay soil and the other on sandy loam. The site is an old-growth moist tropical forest …

The future trajectory of global forests is closely intertwined with tree demography, and a major fundamental goal in ecology is to understand the key mechanisms governing spatial-temporal patterns in tree population dynamics. While historical research has made substantial progress in identifying the mechanisms individually, their relative importance among forests remains unclear mainly due to practical limitations. One approach is to group mechanisms according to their shared effects on the variability of tree vital rates and to quantify patterns therein. We developed a conceptual and statistical framework (variance partitioning of Bayesian multilevel models) that attributes the variability in tree growth, mortality, and recruitment to variation in species, space, and time, and their interactions, categories we refer to as organising principles (OPs). We applied the framework to data from 21 forest plots covering more than 2.9 million trees of approximately 6,500 species. We found that differences among species, the species OP, proved a major source of variability in tree vital rates, explaining 28-33% of demographic variance alone, and in interaction with space 14-17%, totalling 40-43%. The average variability among species declined with species richness across forests, indicating that diverse forests featured smaller interspecific differences in vital rates supporting the theory that the range of vital rates is similar across global forests. Decomposing the variance in vital rates into the proposed OPs showed that taxonomy is crucial to predicting and understanding tree demography on large forest plots. A focus on how variance is organized in forests can …

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 …

The eastern Andean treeline (EATL) is the world’s longest altitudinal ecotone and plays an important role in biodiversity conservation in the context of land use/cover and climate change. The purpose of this study was to assess to what extent the position of the tropical EATL (9°N–18°S) is in near-equilibrium with the climate, which determines its potential to adapt to climate change. On a continental scale, we have used land cover maps (MODIS MCD12) and elevation data (SRTM) to make the first-order assessment of the EATL position and continuity. For the assessment on a local scale and to address the three-dimensional nature of environmental change in mountainous environments, a novel method of automated delineation and assessment of altitudinal transects was devised and applied to Landsat-based forest maps (GLAD) and fine-resolution climatology (CHELSA). The emergence of a consistent longitudinal gradient of the treeline elevation over half of the EATL extent, which increases towards the equator by ~30 m and ~60 m per geographic degree from the south and north, respectively, serves as a first-order validation of the approach, while the local transects reveal a more nuanced aspect-dependent pattern. We conclude that the applied dual-scale approach with automated mass transect sampling allows for an improved understanding of treeline dynamics.

Forest restoration of landscapes benefits both biodiversity and multiple stakeholder groups. We examined how the concept of hybrid ecosystem restoration could be employed in invaded lowland wet forest in Hawai′i to examine biological, economic, and sociocultural benefits of restoration. We quantified the market prevalence of all species found within the Liko Nā Pilina experimental plots in comparison to an invaded lowland wet forest reference site with remnant native species. Using a combination of formal market and informal interviews with cultural practitioners, we examined the use of Non-timber Forest Products (NTFPs) from these species and determined the composition of native and introduced species. We found that the restoration experiment drastically increases the number of desirable species present onsite by more than five-fold, and that the majority of the NTFP species were introduced. Many …

One mechanism proposed to explain high species diversity in tropical systems is strong negative conspecific density dependence (CDD), which reduces recruitment of juveniles in proximity to conspecific adult plants. Although evidence shows that plant-specific soil pathogens can drive negative CDD, trees also form key mutualisms with mycorrhizal fungi, which may counteract these effects. Across 43 large-scale forest plots worldwide, we tested whether ectomycorrhizal tree species exhibit weaker negative CDD than arbuscular mycorrhizal tree species. We further tested for conmycorrhizal density dependence (CMDD) to test for benefit from shared mutualists. We found that the strength of CDD varies systematically with mycorrhizal type, with ectomycorrhizal tree species exhibiting higher sapling densities with increasing adult densities than arbuscular mycorrhizal tree species. Moreover, we found evidence of …

The tropical forest carbon sink is known to be drought sensitive, but it is unclear which forests are the most vulnerable to extreme events. Forests with hotter and drier baseline conditions may be protected by prior adaptation, or more vulnerable because they operate closer to physiological limits. Here we report that forests in drier South American climates experienced the greatest impacts of the 2015–2016 El Niño, indicating greater vulnerability to extreme temperatures and drought. The long-term, ground-measured tree-by-tree responses of 123 forest plots across tropical South America show that the biomass carbon sink ceased during the event with carbon balance becoming indistinguishable from zero (− 0.02±0.37 Mg C ha− 1 per year). However, intact tropical South American forests overall were no more sensitive to the extreme 2015–2016 El Niño than to previous less intense events, remaining a key defence against climate change as long as they are protected.

Tropical forests cover large areas of equatorial Africa and play a substantial role in the global carbon cycle. However, there has been a lack of biometric measurements to understand the forests’ gross and net primary productivity (GPP, NPP) and their allocation. Here we present a detailed field assessment of the carbon budget of multiple forest sites in Africa, by monitoring 14 one-hectare plots along an aridity gradient in Ghana, West Africa. When compared with an equivalent aridity gradient in Amazonia, the studied West African forests generally had higher productivity and lower carbon use efficiency (CUE). The West African aridity gradient consistently shows the highest NPP, CUE, GPP, and autotrophic respiration at a medium-aridity site, Bobiri. Notably, NPP and GPP of the site are the highest yet reported anywhere for intact forests. Widely used data products substantially underestimate productivity when …

(1)The research conducted, including the rationaleThe direct effect of aridity on photosynthetic and water-transport strategies is not easy to discern in global analyses because of large-scale correlations between precipitation and temperature. We analyze tree traits collected along an aridity gradient in Ghana, West Africa, that shows little temperature variation, in an attempt to disentangle thermal and hydraulic influences on plant traits.(2)MethodsPredictions derived from optimality theory of the variation of key plant traits along the gradient are tested with field measurements.(3)ResultsMost photosynthetic traits show trends consistent with optimality-theory predictions, including higher photosynthetic rates in the drier sites, and an association of higher photosynthetic rates with greater respiration rates and greater water transport. Leaf economic and hydraulic traits show less consistency with theory or global-scale pattern, especially predictions based on xylem efficiency-sfatety trafeoff. Nonetheless, the link between photosynthesis and water transport still holds: species (predominantly deciduous species found in drier sites) with both higher sapwood-to-leaf area ratio (AS/AL) and potential hydraulic conductivity (Kp), implying higher transpiration, tend to have both higher photosynthetic capacity, and lower leaf-internal CO2.(4)ConclusionsThese results indicate that aridity is an independent driver of spatial patterns of photosynthetic traits, while plants show a diversity of water-transport strategies along the aridity gradient.Plain language summaryAlong an aridity gradient in Ghana, West-Africa, we used optimality theory to explain why higher …

Drought and fire reduce productivity and increase tree mortality in tropical forests. Fires also produce pyrogenic carbon (PyC), which persists in situ for centuries to millennia, and represents a legacy of past fires, potentially improving soil fertility and water holding capacity and selecting for the survival and recruitment of certain tree life-history (or successional) strategies. We investigated whether PyC is correlated with physicochemical soil properties, wood density, aboveground carbon (AGC) dynamics and forest resistance to severe drought. To achieve our aim, we used an Amazon-wide, long-term plot network, in forests without known recent fires, integrating site-specific measures of forest dynamics, soil properties and a unique soil PyC concentration database. We found that forests with higher concentrations of soil PyC had both higher soil fertility and lower wood density. Soil PyC was not associated with AGC dynamics in non-drought years. However, during extreme drought events (10% driest years), forests with higher concentrations of soil PyC experienced lower reductions in AGC gains (woody growth and recruitment), with this drought-immunizing effect increasing with drought severity. Forests with a legacy of ancient fires are therefore more likely to continue to grow and recruit under increased drought severity. Forests with high soil PyC concentrations (third quartile) had 3.8% greater AGC gains under mean drought, but 33.7% greater under the most extreme drought than forests with low soil PyC concentrations (first quartile), offsetting losses of up to 0.68 Mg C ha–1yr–1 of AGC under extreme drought events. This suggests that ancient …

Credit credibility threatens forests spread logging of old-growth stands, the EU is on track to fail its 2030 goals. Pressure on Europe’s biomass-rich oldgrowth forests is high and rising. Timber prices have increased (8). Compensation would encourage forest owners to adopt strict protection, but there are insufficient resources and tools to provide financial incentives (9). Because landowners anticipate that forest protection will increase in the future, and forest monitoring is sparse, they are motivated to log as much as possible before regulation tightens. To improve protection, the EU should immediately implement a logging moratorium on areas potentially harboring oldgrowth forests, make resources available to detect old-growth forests, require member states to include old-growth protection in their national strategies, and provide equitable financial tools to ensure their effective protection (10). Exemptions from strict …

The stratified nature of tropical forest structure had been noted by early explorers, but until recent use of satellite-based LiDAR (GEDI, or Global Ecosystems Dynamics Investigation LiDAR), it was not possible to quantify stratification across all tropical forests. Understanding stratification is important because by some estimates, a majority of the world’s species inhabit tropical forest canopies. Stratification can modify vertical microenvironment, and thus can affect a species’ susceptibility to anthropogenic climate change. Here we find that, based on analyzing each GEDI 25m diameter footprint in tropical forests (after screening for human impact), most footprints (60-90%) do not have multiple layers of vegetation. The most common forest structure has a minimum plant area index (PAI) at ~40m followed by an increase in PAI until ~15m followed by a decline in PAI to the ground layer (described hereafter as a one peak …

The Arctic is warming at a rate four times the global average, while also being exposed to other global environmental changes, resulting in widespread vegetation and ecosystem change. Integrating functional trait-based approaches with multi-level vegetation, ecosystem, and landscape data enables a holistic understanding of the drivers and consequences of these changes. In two High Arctic study systems near Longyearbyen, Svalbard, a 20-year ITEX warming experiment and elevational gradients with and without nutrient input from nesting seabirds, we collected data on vegetation composition and structure, plant functional traits, ecosystem fluxes, multispectral remote sensing, and microclimate. The dataset contains 1,962 plant records and 16,160 trait measurements from 34 vascular plant taxa, for 9 of which these are the first published trait data. By integrating these comprehensive data, we bridge knowledge …

Forests are a substantial terrestrial carbon sink, but anthropogenic changes in land use and climate have considerably reduced the scale of this system. Remote-sensing estimates to quantify carbon losses from global forests, , – are characterized by considerable uncertainty and we lack a comprehensive ground-sourced evaluation to benchmark these estimates. Here we combine several ground-sourced and satellite-derived approaches,, to evaluate the scale of the global forest carbon potential outside agricultural and urban lands. Despite regional variation, the predictions demonstrated remarkable consistency at a global scale, with only a 12% difference between the ground-sourced and satellite-derived estimates. At present, global forest carbon storage is markedly under the natural potential, with a total deficit of 226 Gt (model range = 151–363 Gt) in areas with low human footprint. Most (61%, 139 Gt C …

Patterns of species diversity have been associated with changes in climate across latitude and elevation. However, the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms underlying these relationships are still actively debated. Here, we present a complementary view of the well-known tropical niche conservatism (TNC) hypothesis, termed the multiple zones of origin (MZO) hypothesis, to explore mechanisms underlying latitudinal and elevational gradients of phylogenetic diversity in tree communities. The TNC hypothesis posits that most lineages originate in warmer, wetter, and less seasonal environments in the tropics and rarely colonize colder, drier, and more seasonal environments outside of the tropical lowlands, leading to higher phylogenetic diversity at lower latitudes and elevations. In contrast, the MZO hypothesis posits that lineages also originate in temperate environments and readily colonize similar environments in the tropical highlands, leading to lower phylogenetic diversity at lower latitudes and elevations. We tested these phylogenetic predictions using a combination of computer simulations and empirical analyses of tree communities in 245 forest plots located in six countries across the tropical and subtropical Andes. We estimated the phylogenetic diversity for each plot and regressed it against elevation and latitude. Our simulated and empirical results provide strong support for the MZO hypothesis. Phylogenetic diversity among co-occurring tree species increased with both latitude and elevation, suggesting an important influence on the historical dispersal of lineages with temperate origins into the tropical highlands. The mixing of …

Aim: 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 th...

Author Correction: Native diversity buffers against severity of non-native tree invasions Cambiar navegación Login Cambiar navegación Ver ítem Repositorio - Inicio INVESTIGACIÓN Artículos SCOPUS Ver ítem Repositorio - Inicio INVESTIGACIÓN Artículos SCOPUS Ver ítem Buscar en DSpace Esta colección InformaciónInicioAcerca deFormulariosManualesAcervo Listar GeneralComunidades & ColeccionesPor fecha de publicaciónAutoresTítulosMateriasEsta colecciónPor fecha de publicaciónAutoresTítulosMaterias xmlui.EPerson.Navigation.loginxmlui.EPerson.Navigation.register Author Correction: Native diversity buffers against severity of non-native tree invasions Thumbnail Fecha 2023-08 Autor Salas-Eljatib, Christian [Centro de Modelación y Monitoreo de Ecosistemas, Universidad Mayor, Chile] Camille S. Delavaux, Thomas W. Crowther, Constantin M. Zohner, Niamh M. Robmann, Thomas Lauber, Johan …

“Least‐cost theory” posits that C3 plants should balance rates of photosynthetic water loss and carboxylation in relation to the relative acquisition and maintenance costs of resources required for these activities. Here we investigated the dependency of photosynthetic traits on climate and soil properties using a new Australia‐wide trait dataset spanning 528 species from 67 sites. We tested the hypotheses that plants on relatively cold or dry sites, or on relatively more fertile sites, would typically operate at greater CO2 drawdown (lower ratio of leaf internal to ambient CO2, Ci:Ca) during light‐saturated photosynthesis, and at higher leaf N per area (Narea) and higher carboxylation capacity (Vcmax 25) for a given rate of stomatal conductance to water vapour, gsw. These results would be indicative of plants having relatively higher water costs than nutrient costs. In general, our hypotheses were supported. Soil total …

Tropical forests face increasing climate risk,, 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 example, 50) and hydraulic safety margins (for example, HSM50) are important predictors of drought-induced mortality risk, –, 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 50 and HSM50 vary markedly across the Amazon and are related to average long-term rainfall characteristics. Both 50 and HSM50 influence the biogeographical distribution of Amazon tree species. However, HSM50 was the only significant predictor …

Seed dispersal is a fundamental process that is highly threatened by the rapid decline of large‐bodied frugivores worldwide. The Brazilian Cerrado, the largest savanna in the world, represents an ideal site for investigating seed dispersal because of its biodiversity, environmental challenges, and knowledge shortfalls. We performed a systematic literature review to analyze the seed dispersal network in the Cerrado and the potential impacts of the defaunation of large‐bodied frugivores on it. We considered network metrics, calculated the defaunation index of the frugivore assemblage, and compared traits among different fruit‐sized plants and their respective dispersers in the network. We retrieved 1565 interactions involving 193 plant species and 270 animal species. Results show that the Cerrado seed dispersal network is slightly nested and considerably modular, dominated by small‐ to medium‐sized generalist …

Two major environmental challenges of our time are responding to climate change and reversing biodiversity decline. Interventions that simultaneously tackle both challenges are highly desirable. To date, most studies aiming to find synergistic interventions for these two challenges have focused on protecting or restoring vegetation and soils but overlooked how conservation or restoration of large wild animals might influence the climate mitigation and adaptation potential of ecosystems. However, interactions between large animal conservation and climate change goals may not always be positive. Here, we review wildlife conservation and climate change mitigation in terrestrial and marine ecosystems. We elucidate general principles about the biome types where, and mechanisms by which, positive synergies and negative trade-offs between wildlife conservation and climate change mitigation are likely. We find …

Evidence exists that tree mortality is accelerating in some regions of the tropics,, with profound consequences for the future of the tropical carbon sink and the global anthropogenic carbon budget left to limit peak global warming below 2 °C. However, the mechanisms that may be driving such mortality changes and whether particular species are especially vulnerable remain unclear, , , , –. Here we analyse a 49-year record of tree dynamics from 24 old-growth forest plots encompassing a broad climatic gradient across the Australian moist tropics and find that annual tree mortality risk has, on average, doubled across all plots and species over the last 35 years, indicating a potential halving in life expectancy and carbon residence time. Associated losses in biomass were not offset by gains from growth and recruitment. Plots in less moist local climates presented higher average mortality risk, but local mean climate did …

Rock‐derived nutrients such as calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) are essential plant resources, yet depleted in highly weathered tropical soils, leading to nutrient limitation of productivity or other ecosystem processes. Despite this, substantial amounts of rock‐derived nutrients occur within wood, which raises questions about the role that wood nutrients play in the ecology of tropical forests. Using data from forests across the tropics, we quantify wood nutrient stocks at individual tree and ecosystem levels. At the ecosystem level, we show that tropical wood can store substantial amounts of rock‐derived nutrients. Furthermore, on a tree level, tree species vary widely in woody nutrient concentrations. These observations raise important questions as to the biogeochemical or ecological drivers that lead to this variability, as well as the role that woody tissue plays in the buffering and …

Thirty years ago, in June 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development—known as the Earth Summit—convened in Rio de Janeiro. There, delegates created both the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). It was in many ways the start of the formal international mission to bring global warming emissions under control and reduce humanity’s negative impacts on

Tropical forests are some of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world, yet their functioning is threatened by anthropogenic disturbances and climate change. Global actions to conserve tropical forests could be enhanced by having local knowledge on the forestsʼ functional diversity and functional redundancy as proxies for their capacity to respond to global environmental change. Here we create estimates of plant functional diversity and redundancy across the tropics by combining a dataset of 16 morphological, chemical and photosynthetic plant traits sampled from 2,461 individual trees from 74 sites distributed across four continents together with local climate data for the past half century. Our findings suggest a strong link between climate and functional diversity and redundancy with the three trait groups responding similarly across the tropics and climate gradient. We show that drier tropical forests are overall …

Old-growth tropical forests are widely recognized as being immensely important for their biodiversity and high biomass. Conversely, logged tropical forests are usually characterized as degraded ecosystems. However, whether logging results in a degradation in ecosystem functions is less clear: shifts in the strength and resilience of key ecosystem processes in large suites of species have rarely been assessed in an ecologically integrated and quantitative framework. Here we adopt an ecosystem energetics lens to gain new insight into the impacts of tropical forest disturbance on a key integrative aspect of ecological function: food pathways and community structure of birds and mammals. We focus on a gradient spanning old-growth and logged forests and oil palm plantations in Borneo. In logged forest there is a 2.5-fold increase in total resource consumption by both birds and mammals compared to that in old …

English. Introduction Tropical forests represent key terrestrial ecosystems for carbon stocks and biodiversity. The dynamics of carbon storage in forests are primarily driven by tree performance in terms of mortality and growth. But climate change is altering tree performance, with important consequences for carbon cycle, climate regulation and biodiversity. Yet, we are still lacking accurate predictions of the response of tropical forest in terms of their composition, dynamics, and functions to altered climate. While demographic approaches have traditionally focused on how individual performance vary with ontogeny or size, trait-based approaches have focused on how morphological or physiological properties of individuals (traits) change with abiotic and biotic factors and links to performance. Though the link between traits and performance influences population dynamics and subsequent community structure and ecosystem functions, we still understand little about the drivers shaping the trait-performance relationship, and in the context of climate change, about how species traits may mediate differential growth sensitivities to average climate conditions or climate anomalies. Methods Here, we use a set of complementary Bayesian multilevel models to understand the effects of average climate conditions and climate anomalies on decades of multi-annual tree growth data encompassing multiple environmental gradients distributed across the tropical continents. We use morphological, chemical and physiological functional traits of over 700 tropical tree species distributed across our plots to test whether interspecific differences in growth sensitivity to …

One of the most fundamental questions in ecology is how many species inhabit the Earth. However, due to massive logistical and financial challenges and taxonomic difficulties connected to the species concept definition, the global numbers of species, including those of important and well-studied life forms such as trees, still remain largely unknown. Here, based on global ground-sourced data, we estimate the total tree species richness at global, continental, and biome levels. Our results indicate that there are ∼73,000 tree species globally, among which ∼9,000 tree species are yet to be discovered. Roughly 40% of undiscovered tree species are in South America. Moreover, almost one-third of all tree species to be discovered may be rare, with very low populations and limited spatial distribution (likely in remote tropical lowlands and mountains). These findings highlight the vulnerability of global forest biodiversity …

Biodiversity, a term now widely employed in science, policy, and wider society, has a burgeoning associated literature. We synthesize aspects of this literature, focusing on several key concepts, debates, patterns, trends, and drivers. We review the history of the term and the multiple dimensions and values of biodiversity, and we explore what is known and not known about global patterns of biodiversity. We then review changes in biodiversity from early human times to the modern era, examining rates of extinction and direct drivers of biodiversity change and also highlighting some less-well-studied drivers. Finally, we turn attention to the indirect drivers of global biodiversity loss, notably humanity's increasing global consumption footprint, and explore what might be required to reverse the ongoing decline in the fabric of life on Earth.

The total demand for and uptake of nutrients by vegetation is rarely quantified or compared across vegetation types. Here, we describe different nutrient use and allocation strategies in neotropical savanna (cerrado) and transitional forest (cerradão) tree communities composed of different species, report leaf nutrient resorption and calculate ecosystem-level nutrient use efficiency. We couple net primary productivity (NPP) estimates with nutrient stoichiometry to quantify nutrient demand and nutrient flows at the whole-stand scale for different components of vegetation biomass. Species from the two vegetation communities showed similar mean nutrient concentrations and nutrient resorption efficiency, except for wood P concentration that was fourfold higher in cerrado than cerradão species. The cerradão showed higher canopy NPP, while fine roots and wood NPP were similar for the two vegetation types. Nutrient requirement in the two vegetation types was dominated by the demands of the canopy, with canopy resorption generally contributing more than 50 % of the total canopy demand for nutrients, while less than 35 % of N, P, K, Ca and Mg were allocated to wood or fine roots. Proportionally, cerrado showed higher nutrient demand from fine roots (over 35 % of the total nutrient demand) and for the wood component (over 13 % of the total nutrient demand), while ∼ 60 %–70 % of the cerradão nutrient demand was allocated to the canopy. The proportional difference in nutrient allocation to the different biomass components suggests cerrado species allocate less nutrients to a given fine root biomass, but more nutrients to a given wood …

The growth and survival of individual trees determine the physical structure of a forest with important consequences for forest function. However, given the diversity of tree species and forest biomes, quantifying the multitude of demographic strategies within and across forests and the way that they translate into forest structure and function remains a significant challenge. Here, we quantify the demographic rates of 1961 tree species from temperate and tropical forests and evaluate how demographic diversity (DD) and demographic composition (DC) differ across forests, and how these differences in demography relate to species richness, aboveground biomass (AGB), and carbon residence time. We find wide variation in DD and DC across forest plots, patterns that are not explained by species richness or climate variables alone. There is no evidence that DD has an effect on either AGB or carbon residence time …

Terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs) are invaluable tools for studying plant–atmosphere interactions at multiple spatial and temporal scales, as well as how global change impacts ecosystems. Yet, TBM projections suffer from large uncertainties that limit their usefulness. Forest structure drives a significant part of TBM uncertainty as it regulates key processes such as the transfer of carbon, energy, and water between the land and the atmosphere, but it remains challenging to observe and reliably represent. The poor representation of forest structure in TBMs might actually result in simulations that reproduce observed land fluxes but fail to capture carbon pools, forest composition, and demography. Recent advances in terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) offer new opportunities to capture the three-dimensional structure of the ecosystem and to transfer this information to TBMs in order to increase their accuracy. In this study, we quantified the impacts of prescribing initial conditions (tree size distribution), constraining key model parameters with observations, as well as imposing structural observations of individual trees (namely tree height, leaf area, woody biomass, and crown area) derived from TLS on the state-of-the-art Ecosystem Demography model (ED2.2) of a temperate forest site (Wytham Woods, UK). We assessed the relative contributions of initial conditions, model structure, and parameters to the overall output uncertainty by running ensemble simulations with multiple model configurations. We show that forest demography and ecosystem functions as modelled by ED2.2 are sensitive to the imposed initial state, the model parameters, and the …

Tropical forests are threatened by degradation and deforestation but the consequences for these ecosystems are poorly understood, particularly at the landscape scale. We present the most extensive ecosystem analysis to date of the impacts of logging and conversion of tropical forest to oil palm from a large-scale study in Borneo, synthesizing responses from 79 variables categorized into four hierarchical ecological ‘levels’: 1) structure and environment, 2) species traits, 3) biodiversity and 4) ecosystem functions. Variables at the lowest levels that were directly impacted by the physical processes of timber extraction, such as soil characteristics, were sensitive to even moderate amounts of logging, whereas biodiversity and ecosystem functions proved remarkably resilient to logging in many cases, but were more affected by conversion to oil palm plantation.One-Sentence SummaryLogging tropical forest mostly impacts structure while biodiversity and functions are more vulnerable to habitat conversion

Nutrientscape ecology: An integrative approach for studying nutrient connectivity in tropical coastal environments - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu Documentation FR Français (FR) Anglais (EN) Se connecter HAL science ouverte Recherche Loading... Recherche avancée Information de documents Titres Titres Sous-titre Titre de l'ouvrage Titre du volume (Série) Champ de recherche par défaut (multicritères) + texte intégral des PDF Résumé Texte intégral indexé des documents PDF Mots-clés Type de document Sous-type de document Tous les identifiants du document Identifiant HAL du dépôt Langue du document (texte) Pays (Texte) Ville À paraître (true ou false) Ajouter Auteur Auteur (multicritères) Auteur (multicritères) Auteur : Nom complet Auteur : Nom de famille Auteur : Prénom Auteur : Complément de nom, deuxième prénom Auteur : Organisme payeur Auteur : IdHal (chaîne de …

Tropical tree species span a range of life‐history strategies within a fast–slow continuum. The position of a species within this continuum is thought to reflect a negative relationship between growth and storage, with fast‐growing species allocating more carbon to growth and slow‐growing species investing more in storage. For tropical species, the relationship between storage and life‐history strategies has been largely studied on seedlings and less so in adult trees. We evaluated how stored non‐structural carbohydrates (NSC) vary across adult trees spanning the fast–slow continuum in the Peruvian Amazon by: (a) analysing whole‐tree NSC in two species of contrasting growth and (b) investigating the relationships with key life‐history traits across a broader set of species. Our results are consistent with a growth–storage trade‐off. The analysis of whole‐tree NSC revealed that the slow‐growing Eschweilera …

Since Darwin, studies of human evolution have tended to give primacy to open ‘savannah’ environments as the ecological cradle of our lineage, with dense tropical forests cast as hostile, unfavourable frontiers. These perceptions continue to shape both the geographical context of fieldwork as well as dominant narratives concerning hominin evolution. This paradigm persists despite new, ground-breaking research highlighting the role of tropical forests in the human story. For example, novel research in Africa's rainforests has uncovered archaeological sites dating back into the Pleistocene; genetic studies have revealed very deep human roots in Central and West Africa and in the tropics of Asia and the Pacific; an unprecedented number of coexistent hominin species have now been documented, including Homo erectus, the ‘Hobbit’ (Homo floresiensis), Homo luzonensis, Denisovans, and Homo sapiens. Some of …

This review explains the science behind the drive for global net zero emissions and why this is needed to halt the ongoing rise in global temperatures. We document how the concept of net zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions emerged from an earlier focus on stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Using simple conceptual models of the coupled climate–carbon cycle system, we explain why approximately net zero CO2 emissions and declining net energy imbalance due to other climate drivers are required to halt global warming on multidecadal timescales, introducing important concepts, including the rate of adjustment to constant forcing and the rate of adjustment to zero emissions. The concept of net zero was taken up through the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC …

Assessing the impacts of anthropogenic degradation and climate change on global carbon cycling is hindered by a lack of clear, flexible and easy‐to‐use productivity models along with scarce trait and productivity data for parameterizing and testing those models. We provide a simple solution: a mechanistic framework (RS‐CFM) that combines remotely‐sensed foliar‐trait and canopy‐structural data with trait‐based metabolic theory to efficiently map productivity at large spatial scales. We test this framework by quantifying net primary productivity (NPP) at high‐resolution (0.01‐ha) in hyper‐diverse Peruvian tropical forests (30040 hectares) along a 3322‐m elevation gradient. Our analysis captures hotspots and elevational shifts in productivity more accurately and in greater detail than alternative empirical‐ and process‐based models that use plant functional types. This result exposes how high‐resolution, location …

Coelogyne squamulosa is illustrated from a specimen flowering in cultivation. The history of its discovery and rediscovery in Borneo and its ecology are described. Related species are discussed and a detailed description of C. squamulosa is given.

The biophysical magnitude of global human economic activity is arguably the defining feature and challenge of the Anthropocene, leading to multiple environmental consequences. Quantifying this magnitude at sufficient resolution remains a challenge. We define and present the first detailed district-level analysis of Net National Metabolism (NNM) – a social metabolism energy metric – for an industrialised country (the United Kingdom), using data on household energy alongside household expenditure survey data and energy intensity figures for product categories. The total UK NNM is estimated as 7.56 EJ year−1 (3650 W per capita), 44% of which stems from energy embodied in products and services consumed by households. This is comparable with the metabolism of the UK biosphere (approximately 6.95 EJ year−1). Of the final energy embodied in consumption of goods and services, 46% is dependent …

Back Bay, Virginia, has been documented as an important foraging area for waterfowl since at least the mid‐1800s. Expansive submerged plant beds historically supported diverse assemblages of non‐breeding waterfowl; however, coastal development and other anthropogenic influences have since led to fluctuations in submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) and an associated decline in waterfowl abundance in the bay. To gain insight into the effects of environmental drivers on waterfowl foraging guilds, our study explores the effects of SAV frequency and water quality on the abundance of dabbling ducks, diving ducks and swans and geese in Back Bay. We use 8 years of SAV, water quality, and waterfowl monitoring data collected by state and federal agencies to model the effects of salinity, turbidity, pH and percent frequency of SAV on the relative abundance of waterfowl by foraging guild in Back Bay. The …

There is growing interest in aligning the wildlife conservation and restoration agenda with climate change mitigation goals. However, the presence of large herbivores tends to reduce aboveground biomass in some open-canopy ecosystems, leading to the possibility that large herbivore restoration may negatively influence ecosystem carbon storage. Belowground carbon storage is often ignored in these systems, despite the wide recognition of soils as the largest actively-cycling terrestrial carbon pool. Here, we suggest a shift away from a main focus on vegetation carbon stocks, towards inclusion of whole ecosystem carbon persistence, in future assessments of large herbivore effects on long-term carbon storage. Failure to do so may lead to counterproductive biodiversity and climate impacts of land management actions.

Tree death is a key process for our understanding of how forests are and will respond to global change. The extensive forests across the southern Amazonia edge—the driest, warmest and most fragmented of the Amazon regions—provide a window onto what the future of large parts of Amazonia may look like. Understanding tree mortality and its drivers here is essential to anticipate the process across other parts of the basin. Using 10 years of data from a widespread network of long‐term forest plots, we assessed how trees die (standing, broken or uprooted) and used generalised mixed‐effect models to explore the contribution of plot‐, species‐ and tree‐level factors to the likelihood of tree death. Most trees died from stem breakage (54%); a smaller proportion died standing (41%), while very few were uprooted (5%). The mortality rate for standing dead trees was greatest in forests subject to the most intense dry …

Quantifying climate mitigation benefits of biosphere protection or restoration requires accurate assessment of forest above‐ground biomass (AGB). This is usually estimated using tree size‐to‐mass allometric models calibrated with harvested biomass data. Using three‐dimensional laser measurements across the full range of tree size and shape in a typical UK temperate forest, we show that its AGB is 409.9 t ha−1, 1.77 times more than current allometric model estimates. This discrepancy arises partly from the bias towards small trees in allometric model calibration: 50% of AGB in this forest was in less than 7% of the largest trees (stem diameter > 53.1 cm), all larger than the trees used to calibrate the widely used allometric model. We present new empirical evidence that the fundamental assumption of tree size‐to‐mass scale‐invariance is not well‐justified for this kind of forest. This leads to substantial biases in …

Logged and degraded tropical forests are fast becoming one of the most dominant land-use types throughout the tropics, yet there is limited understanding of the impact of logging on tropical forest function and carbon balance. To date, previous research on the carbon dynamics of logged and degraded forests has mostly focused on carbon stock recovery during forest regrowth and asserted these ecosystems as an important carbon sink due to rapid increase in stem biomass. These estimates of biomass sink function do not, however, serve as an assessment of the ecosystem carbon balance, as they do not include estimates of the carbon losses through ecosystem respiration, particularly from heterotrophic sources. We quantified the complete carbon budget in old-growth, moderately logged, and heavily logged forests within Malaysian Borneo, a region that is a hotspot for deforestation and degradation. We present …

Aim Water availability is the major driver of tropical forest structure and dynamics. Most research has focused on the impacts of climatic water availability, whereas remarkably little is known about the influence of water table depth and excess soil water on forest processes. Nevertheless, given that plants take up water from the soil, the impacts of climatic water supply on plants are likely to be modulated by soil water conditions. Location Lowland Amazonian forests. Time period 1971–2019. Methods We used 344 long‐term inventory plots distributed across Amazonia to analyse the effects of long‐term climatic and edaphic water supply on forest functioning. We modelled forest structure and dynamics as a function of climatic, soil‐water and edaphic properties. Results Water supplied by both precipitation and groundwater affects forest structure and dynamics, but in different ways. Forests with a shallow water …

Anthropogenic climate change causes more frequent and intense fluctuations in the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Understanding the effects of ENSO on agricultural systems is crucial for predicting and ameliorating impacts on lives and livelihoods, particularly in perennial tree crops, which may show both instantaneous and delayed responses. Using cocoa production in Ghana as a model system, we analyse the impact of ENSO on annual production and climate over the last 70 years. We report that in recent decades, El Niño years experience reductions in cocoa production followed by several years of increased production, and that this pattern has significantly shifted compared with prior to the 1980s. ENSO phase appears to affect the climate in Ghana, and over the same time period, we see corresponding significant shifts in the climatic conditions resulting from ENSO extremes, with increasing …

Allometric equations for calculation of tree above‐ground biomass (AGB) form the basis for estimates of forest carbon storage and exchange with the atmosphere. While standard models exist to calculate forest biomass across the tropics, we lack a standardized tool for computing AGB across boreal and temperate regions that comprise the global extratropics. Here we present an integrated R package, allodb, containing systematically selected published allometric equations and proposed functions to compute AGB. The data component of the package is based on 701 woody species identified at 24 large Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO) forest dynamics plots representing a wide diversity of extratropical forests. A total of 570 parsed allometric equations to estimate individual tree biomass were retrieved, checked and combined using a weighting function designed to ensure optimal equation selection …

1. Tropical forests are the most productive terrestrial ecosystems, fixing over 40 Pg of carbon from the atmosphere each year. A substantial portion of this carbon is allocated below-ground to roots and root-associated micro-organisms. However, there have been very few empirical studies on the dynamics of this below ground transfer, especially in tropical forests where carbon allocation processes are influenced by high plant species diversity. 2. We used a whole-stand girdling experiment to halt the below-ground transfer of recent photosynthates in a lowland tropical forest in Borneo. By girdling 209 large trees in a 0.48 ha plot, we determined: (a) the contribution of recent photosynthate to root-rhizosphere respiration and; (b) the relationships among the disruption of this below-ground carbon supply, tree species composition and mortality. 3. Mortality of the 209 trees was 62% after 370 days, with large variation among species and particularly high mortality within the Dipterocarpaceae (99%) and Fagaceae (100%) families. We also observed a higher risk of mortality following girdling for species with lower wood density. 4. Soil CO2 emissions declined markedly (36 ± 5%) over ~50 days following girdling in three of six monitored subplots. In the other three subplots there was either a marginal decline or no response of soil CO2 emissions to girdling. The decrease in soil CO2 efflux was larger in subplots with dominance of Dipterocarpaceae. 5. Synthesis. Our results indicate high spatial variation in the coupling of below-ground carbon allocation and root-rhizosphere respiration in this tropical forest, with a closer coupling in forest dominated by …

Many countries have made ambitious pledges to increase forest areas to mitigate climate change. However, the availability of land to meet these goals is not well understood. Global studies indicate substantial potential, but do not account for local land‐use and regional variation, crucial for policy making. Using India as a case study, we use a machine learning framework to define the bioclimatic envelope of forest cover and map this against current land‐uses with varying suitability for restoration. We estimate the additional feasible area for restoration to be only 1.58 Mha, cumulatively sequestering 61.3 TgC, which is substantially less than estimates derived from global studies. However, we also find up to 14.67 Mha of opportunity for agroforestry in current agricultural land, delivering up to 98.1 TgC nationally. In the UN Decade of Restoration, we recommend developing forest restoration strategies that are …

Data capturing multiple axes of tree size and shape, such as a tree's stem diameter, height and crown size, underpin a wide range of ecological research—from developing and testing theory on forest structure and dynamics, to estimating forest carbon stocks and their uncertainties, and integrating remote sensing imagery into forest monitoring programmes. However, these data can be surprisingly hard to come by, particularly for certain regions of the world and for specific taxonomic groups, posing a real barrier to progress in these fields. To overcome this challenge, we developed the Tallo database, a collection of 498,838 georeferenced and taxonomically standardized records of individual trees for which stem diameter, height and/or crown radius have been measured. These data were collected at 61,856 globally distributed sites, spanning all major forested and non‐forested biomes. The majority of trees in the …

Forests play an important role in the exchange of radiatively important gases with the atmosphere. Previous studies have shown that in both temperate and tropical wetland forests tree stems are significant sources of methane, yet little is known about tree stem trace greenhouse gas dynamics in drier, free-draining soils that dominate global forested areas. Here, we examine methane fluxes on tree stems spanning a climate gradient of upland forests and floodplain forest across 4 locations in the Amazon, Brazil (Cunia, Rios Negro, Solimoes and Tapajos), lowland tropical forest on free-draining soils in Panama, Central America (Barro Colorado Nature Monument), deciduous woodland in the United Kingdom (Wytham, Oxfordshire) and boreal forest in Sweden. We found that trees behaved as both methane sources (near the tree base) and sinks (higher up the tree stem) across tropical, temperate and boreal sites and …

The stratified nature of tropical forest structure had been noted by early explorers, but until recent use of satellite-based LiDAR (GEDI, or Global Ecosystems Dynamics Investigation LiDAR), there has been no way to quantify stratification across all tropical forests. Understanding stratification is important because by some estimates, a majority of the world’s species inhabit tropical forest canopies. Stratification can modify vertical microenvironment, and thus can affect a species’ susceptibility to global warming. A better understanding of structure could also improve predictions of biomass across the tropics. Here we find that, based on analyzing each GEDI 25m diameter footprint in tropical forests (after screening for human impact), most footprints (60-90%) do not have multiple layers of vegetation. We find stratification depends on the spatial resolution of the pixel (e.g. going from a 25m footprint to a 1 ha footprint will impact the results). However, with a 25m footprint, the most common forest structure has a minimum plant area index (PAI) at ~40m followed by an increase in PAI until ~15m followed by a decline in PAI to the ground layer (described hereafter as a one peak footprint). However, there are large geographic patterns to forest structure within the Amazon basin (ranging between 60-90% one peak) and between the Amazon (79±9sd) and SE Asia or Africa (72±14 v 73±11). The number of canopy layers is significantly correlated with tree height (r2=0.12), forest biomass (r2=0.14), maximum temperature (Tmax) (r2=0.05), vapor pressure deficit (VPD) (r2=0.03) and soil fertility proxies (e.g. total cation exchange capacity -r2=0.01). Certain …

Cocoa is an important crop for Ghana's economy, contributing 25% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The crop, however, is mainly cultivated on forest‐derived soils and is a major cause of land‐use change. Termites are an important biological component of tropical ecosystems providing numerous ecosystem services. Previous studies have indicated that termites are sensitive to forest disturbance and decrease in richness and abundance across land‐use intensification gradients, with consequences for the essential services that they provide. Native shade trees are often used to improve cocoa cultivation and may reduce the detrimental effects of land‐use change on some aspects of biodiversity. The aim of this study was therefore to explore how termites respond to land‐use change along a shade‐tree gradient in Kakum National Park and surrounding cocoa farms in Ghana (from forest at 80% tree cover to cocoa …

A better understanding of how climate affects growth in tree species is essential for improved predictions of forest dynamics under climate change. Long‐term climate averages (mean climate) drive spatial variations in species’ baseline growth rates, whereas deviations from these averages over time (anomalies) can create growth variation around the local baseline. However, the rarity of long‐term tree census data spanning climatic gradients has so far limited our understanding of their respective role, especially in tropical systems. Furthermore, tree growth sensitivity to climate is likely to vary widely among species, and the ecological strategies underlying these differences remain poorly understood. Here, we utilize an exceptional dataset of 49 years of growth data for 509 tree species across 23 tropical rainforest plots along a climatic gradient to examine how multiannual tree growth responds to both climate …

There is growing interest in aligning the wildlife conservation and restoration agenda with climate change mitigation goals. Yet, grasslands are often overlooked in the climate change and mitigation debate, despite their well-known ability to store large amounts of carbon in the soil often enough to compensate for the lower aboveground biomass compared to forests. With predicted severe changes in disturbance regimes in many areas of the world, it is pertinent to move away from focussing solely on C-stock sizes to also factor in vulnerability. Soil C in general, and mineral-associated organic matter (MAOM) in particular, is much less susceptible to loss during perturbations compared to aboveground biomass. Herbivores at natural densities may reduce vulnerable aboveground biomass but increase belowground storage. Building persistent soil C-pools (MAOM) depends on the diversity and amount of organic matter …