Drier tropical forests are susceptible to functional changes in response to a long‐term drought

Aguirre‐Gutiérrez, Jesús; Oliveras, Imma; Rifai, Sami W.; Fauset, Sophie; Adu‐Bredu, Stephen; Affum‐Baffoe, Kofi; Baker, Timothy R.; Feldpausch, Ted R.; Gvozdevaite, Agne; Hubau, Wannes; Kraft, Nathan J. B.; Lewis, Simon L.; Moore, Sam; Niinemets, Ülo; Peprah, Theresa; Phillips, Oliver L.; Ziemiñska, Kasia; Enquist, Brian J.; Malhi, Yadvinder

doi:10.1111/ele.13243

Cited by 86 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 68 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Yuan et al 38 have shown how increases in VPD can reduce vegetation growth as a result of changes in photosynthetic activity, and may also cause faster mortality during drought for tree seedlings 39 , which could thus affect ecosystem functioning. Our results and other recent work analysing functional trait shifts in tropical forests 4 evidence how climate may be acting on the filtering of species in such high water deficit communities, which are already under high climatic pressure and at the edge of their climatic suitability. We show that those communities are in general becoming functionally, taxonomically and phylogenetically more homogeneous than forest communities in areas less restricted by water availability, and thus they may be less resistant 40 to further changes in climatic conditions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

“…Some of the main drivers of such biodiversity decline are climate related: altered precipitation and temperature patterns, and extreme weather events 3 . In West Africa, a drying environment over the last decades has been associated with changes in forest composition, leaf phenology and communitylevel functional traits 4,5 , i.e. the intrinsic morphological/physiological characteristics of species.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, the question remains as whether tropical forests along climatic gradients show coordinated responses to climate change regarding their functional, taxonomic and phylogenetic facets of diversity. It has been recently shown that the plant traits composition in West African tropical forests has shifted more in drier than wetter forests, arguably as a result of a changing climate 4 . In such drier forests the abundance of deciduous species is increasing, which could be generating forest communities better adapted to a drying climate 5 .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Long-term droughts may drive drier tropical forests towards increased functional, taxonomic and phylogenetic homogeneity

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Tropical ecosystems adapted to high water availability may be highly impacted by climatic changes that increase soil and atmospheric moisture deficits. Many tropical regions are experiencing significant changes in climatic conditions, which may induce strong shifts in taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity of forest communities. However, it remains unclear if and to what extent tropical forests are shifting in these facets of diversity along climatic gradients in response to climate change. Here, we show that changes in climate affected all three facets of diversity in West Africa in recent decades. Taxonomic and functional diversity increased in wetter forests but tended to decrease in forests with drier climate. Phylogenetic diversity showed a large decrease along a wet-dry climatic gradient. Notably, we find that all three facets of diversity tended to be higher in wetter forests. Drier forests showed functional, taxonomic and phylogenetic homogenization. Understanding how different facets of diversity respond to a changing environment across climatic gradients is essential for effective long-term conservation of tropical forest ecosystems.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Long-term droughts may drive drier tropical forests towards increased functional, taxonomic and phylogenetic homogeneity

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This would indicate low adaptive capacity to rapid changes in temperature and rainfall regimes, resulting in higher mortality rates for trees more at risk of embolism . Predictions for the tropics are that species dominance will shift to those with drought tolerant traits, with concomitant loss of evergreen species, particularly in sites exhibiting increasing drought duration (Aguirre-Gutiérrez et al, 2019;Bartlett et al, 2019). This transition is likely to entail large-scale die-off of the tallest trees in old-growth forest, resulting in a pulse in global carbon emissions .…”

Section: Proposed Mechanisms For Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

Combining Contemporary and Paleoecological Perspectives for Estimating Forest Resilience

Morel

Nogué

2019

Front. For. Glob. Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the face of dramatic climate change and human pressure acting on remaining forest areas across tropical, temperate and boreal biomes, there has emerged a coordinated effort to identify and protect forests that are currently considered "intact". These forests are hypothesized to be more resilient to future abiotic perturbations than fragmented or degraded forests, and therefore, will provide more reliable carbon storage and/or biodiversity services into an uncertain future. Research in the fields of contemporary and paleoecology can offer valuable insights to enhance our ability to assess resilience of forests and whether these would be comparable across forest biomes. Contemporary ecological monitoring has been able to capture processes acting over the short-to-medium term, while paleoecological methods allow us to derive insights of the long-term processes affecting forest dynamics. Recent efforts to both identify intact forests, based on area definitions, and assess vegetation climate sensitivity globally have relied on satellite imagery analysis for the time period 2000-2013. In this paper, we compare these published datasets and do find that on average intact forests in boreal and tropical biomes are less sensitive to temperature and water availability, respectively; however, the patterns are less clear within biomes (e.g., across continents). By taking a longer perspective, through paleoecology, we present several studies that show a range of forest responses to past climatic and human disturbance, suggesting that short-term trends may not be reliable predictors of long-term resilience. We highlight that few contemporary and paleoecology studies have considered forest area when assessing resilience and those that have did find that smaller forest areas exhibited greater dynamism in species composition, which could be a proxy for declining resilience. Climatic conditions in the Anthropocene will be pushing forest systems across biomes into novel climates very rapidly and with current knowledge it is difficult to predict how forests will react in the immediate term, which is the most relevant timeframe for global efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

show abstract

“…If long-term global environmental change favours tree species with traits that are better adapted to new climate realities (while causing higher mortality for species with unfavoured traits), these differences in demographic changes may induce spatially divergent shifts in functional composition. However, exactly how temporal shifts in functional traits are associated with spatial gradients of the baseline climate have rarely been tested, with insights being limited only to a water availability gradient in tropical forests 7 . Yet, we are not cognizant of how the rate and directionality of compositional shifts are dependent on larger scale environmental contexts across regions and biomes, particularly as relates to baseline temperature.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional shifts in natural forests under environmental change over the last 65 years are faster in colder regions

Hisano¹,

Chen²,

Chen³

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Global environmental changes have significantly impacted plant diversity and composition over many decades. Maintaining biodiversity and composition is critical for sustainability of ecosystem functioning and related services. While global environmental changes have modified plant species and functional compositions in forest ecosystems, it remains unclear how temporal shifts in functional composition differ across regions and biomes. Utilizing extensive spatial and long-term forest inventory data (17,107 plots monitored 1951–2016) across Canada, we found that functional composition shifted toward fast-growing deciduous broadleaved trees and higher drought tolerance over time; notably, this functional shift was more rapid in colder regions. Further analysis revealed that the functional composition of colder plots shifted toward drought tolerance more rapidly with rising CO2 than warmer plots, which suggests the vulnerability of the functional composition of colder plots against global environmental changes. Future ecosystem management practices should consider spatial differences in functional responses to global environmental change, with particular attention to colder plots that experience higher rates of warming and compositional changes.

show abstract

Drier tropical forests are susceptible to functional changes in response to a long‐term drought

Cited by 86 publications

References 68 publications

Long-term droughts may drive drier tropical forests towards increased functional, taxonomic and phylogenetic homogeneity

Long-term droughts may drive drier tropical forests towards increased functional, taxonomic and phylogenetic homogeneity

Combining Contemporary and Paleoecological Perspectives for Estimating Forest Resilience

Functional shifts in natural forests under environmental change over the last 65 years are faster in colder regions

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About