IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcli/v9y2019i5d10.1038_s41558-019-0458-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Amazonian rainforest tree mortality driven by climate and functional traits

Author

Listed:
  • Izabela Aleixo

    (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia
    Wageningen University and Research)

  • Darren Norris

    (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia
    Universidade Federal do Amapá
    Universidade Federal do Amapá)

  • Lia Hemerik

    (Wageningen University)

  • Antenor Barbosa

    (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia)

  • Eduardo Prata

    (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia)

  • Flávia Costa

    (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia
    Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia)

  • Lourens Poorter

    (Wageningen University and Research)

Abstract

Tree mortality appears to be increasing in moist tropical forests1, with potentially important implications for global carbon and water cycles2. Little is known about the drivers of tree mortality in these diverse forests, partly because long-term data are lacking3. The relative importance of climatic factors and species functional traits as drivers of tropical tree mortality are evaluated using a unique dataset in which the survival of over 1,000 rainforest canopy trees from over 200 species has been monitored monthly over five decades in the Central Amazon. We found that drought, as well as heat, storms and extreme rainy years, increase tree mortality for at least two years after the climatic event. Specific functional groups (pioneers, softwoods and evergreens) had especially high mortality during extreme years. These results suggest that predicted climate change will lead to higher tree mortality rates, especially for short-lived species, which may result in faster carbon sequestration but lower carbon storage of tropical forests.

Suggested Citation

  • Izabela Aleixo & Darren Norris & Lia Hemerik & Antenor Barbosa & Eduardo Prata & Flávia Costa & Lourens Poorter, 2019. "Amazonian rainforest tree mortality driven by climate and functional traits," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 9(5), pages 384-388, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcli:v:9:y:2019:i:5:d:10.1038_s41558-019-0458-0
    DOI: 10.1038/s41558-019-0458-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0458-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41558-019-0458-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Antoine Leblois, 2021. "Mitigating the impact of bad rainy seasons in poor agricultural regions to tackle deforestation," Post-Print hal-03111007, HAL.
    2. Matheus Henrique Nunes & José Luís Campana Camargo & Grégoire Vincent & Kim Calders & Rafael S. Oliveira & Alfredo Huete & Yhasmin Mendes de Moura & Bruce Nelson & Marielle N. Smith & Scott C. Stark &, 2022. "Forest fragmentation impacts the seasonality of Amazonian evergreen canopies," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.
    3. David B Clark & Antonio Ferraz & Deborah A Clark & James R Kellner & Susan G Letcher & Sassan Saatchi, 2019. "Diversity, distribution and dynamics of large trees across an old-growth lowland tropical rain forest landscape," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(11), pages 1-23, November.
    4. Yanlei Feng & Robinson I. Negrón-Juárez & David M. Romps & Jeffrey Q. Chambers, 2023. "Amazon windthrow disturbances are likely to increase with storm frequency under global warming," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-8, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcli:v:9:y:2019:i:5:d:10.1038_s41558-019-0458-0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.