Recovery and resilience of tropical forests after disturbance

Abstract

The time taken for forested tropical ecosystems to re-establish post-disturbance is of widespread interest. Yet to date there has been no comparative study across tropical biomes to determine rates of forest re-growth, and how they vary through space and time. Here we present results from a meta-analysis of palaeoecological records that use fossil pollen as a proxy for vegetation change over the past 20,000 years. A total of 283 forest disturbance and recovery events, reported in 71 studies, are identified across four tropical regions. Results indicate that forests in Central America and Africa generally recover faster from past disturbances than those in South America and Asia, as do forests exposed to natural large infrequent disturbances compared with post-climatic and human impacts. Results also demonstrate that increasing frequency of disturbance events at a site through time elevates recovery rates, indicating a degree of resilience in forests exposed to recurrent past disturbance.

Relation between stability and resilience determines the performance of early warning signals under different environmental drivers

“…To understand how a dynamical system can respond to drivers differently and the implications for early warning signals, we need to examine resilience and stability (38)(39)(40), the two fundamental properties underlying the dynamics of a system (Fig. 3).…”

Pacific island tropical cyclones are more frequent and globally relevant, yet less studied

“…A comparison of 40 years of ACE epitomizes the value of the western Pacific region for studying TCs (Figure 1B), in that mean of the western Pacific greatly exceeded that of the Atlantic. (3) Paleoecological research indicates localities with a history of TCs exhibit greater TC resilience than localities with less frequent TCs (Cole et al, 2014). The authors indicate the systems evolved as a unit to frequent disturbances.…”

“…(4) The vast majority of the scientific publications in the Atlantic hurricane zone have come from continental habitats. Islands interact with TCs in a manner that is distinct from how continental land mass interacts with TCs (Text Box 2), and (Cole et al, 2014) and ecosystems that have experienced frequent TCs exhibit greater resilience than ecosystems that are naïve with respect to TCs, the value of contemporary research in the Atlantic is highly compromised in regards to informing the future. Based on relative global value alone, one would expect a rich history of publications on Pacific island TCs.…”

The Food–Energy–Water Nexus: A Framework to Address Sustainable Development in the Tropics

“…In addition, the ecological community is still only beginning to understand the ability of tropical forests to recover from disturbance. How quickly forests recover from land clearing and how biodiversity losses affect forests' ability to withstand future disturbances are ongoing fields of inquiry (Cole, Bhagwat, & Willis, 2014;Sakschewski et al, 2016). Further insight is vital to ensure that large swaths of tropical forest, and all their accompanying services, do not catastrophically switch to a state of savanna-a FEW system tragedy comparable with the shrinking of the Aral Sea due to unsustainable irrigation practices and hydropower development in Central Asia (Cai, McKinney, & Rosegrant, 2003;Hirota, Holmgren, Van Nes, & Scheffer, 2011).…”