Recent advances and challenges in monitoring and modeling of disturbances in tropical moist forests

Abstract

Tropical moist forests have been severely affected by natural and anthropogenic disturbances, leading to substantial changes in global carbon cycle and climate. These effects have received great attention in scientific research and debates. Here we review recent progress on drivers and ecological impacts of tropical moist forest disturbances, and their monitoring and modeling methods. Disturbances in tropical moist forests are primarily driven by clearcutting, selective logging, fire, extreme drought, and edge effects. Compound disturbances such as fire and edge effects aggravate degradation in the edge forests. Drought can result in terrestrial carbon loss via physiological impacts. These disturbances lead to direct carbon loss, biophysical warming and microclimate change. Remote sensing observations are promising for monitoring forest disturbances and revealing mechanisms, which will be useful for implementing disturbance processes in dynamic vegetation models. Yet, constrained spatiotemporal coverages and resolutions limit the application of these data in process-based models. It is also challenging to represent physical processes derived from fine-resolution remote sensing data in coarse-resolution models. We highlight the need to continuously integrate new datasets and physical processes in forest disturbance modeling to advance understanding of disturbance patterns and impacts. Interactions and impacts of climate change and anthropogenic activities should also be considered for modeling and assessing feedbacks of tropical moist forest disturbances.

Global carbon balance of the forest: satellite-based L-VOD results over the last decade

“…(1) land use and land cover change (LULCC), mostly related directly (e.g., deforestation and plantation) or indirectly (e.g., reforestation after crop abandonment) to anthropic activities: (i) the large C sinks found in southern China related to very large forest management programs since 2000 (Tong et al, 2020); in rubber plantations in Southeast Asia; in Russia and eastern Europe due to persisting effects of agricultural abandonment after the fall of the Soviet Union (Winkler et al, 2023); in the Central Africa Republic from forest regrowth due to political instability. (ii) the large C sources in the tropics are mostly related to deforestation and forest degradation in South America, in the arc of deforestation in Amazonia (Qin et al, 2021;Fawcett et al, 2022) and eastern regions of Brazil as well as in Africa, in the Congo basin (mostly in DRC), in Zambia, Madagascar, etc (Wigneron et al, 2020;He et al, 2024;Zhao et al, 2024).…”

“…In the tropical region of Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) also appeared as a large region of C losses, mainly due to deforestation and degradation (He et al, 2024;(Zhao et al, 2024), as in Brazil and southern Amazonia. Most of the undisturbed wet tropical forests are carbon sinks, which is in agreement with inventory data (Brienen et al, 2015).…”