Forests have a key role in global ecosystems, hosting much of the world's terrestrial biodiversity and acting as a net sink for atmospheric carbon. These and other ecosystem services that are ...provided by forests may be sensitive to climate change as well as climate variability on shorter time scales (for example, annual to decadal). Previous studies have documented responses of forest ecosystems to climate change and climate variability, including drought-induced increases in tree mortality rates. However, relationships between forest biomass, tree species composition and climate variability have not been quantified across a large region using systematically sampled data. Here we use systematic forest inventories from the 1980s and 2000s across the eastern USA to show that forest biomass responds to decadal-scale changes in water deficit, and that this biomass response is amplified by concurrent changes in community-mean drought tolerance, a functionally important aspect of tree species composition. The amplification of the direct effects of water stress on biomass occurs because water stress tends to induce a shift in tree species composition towards species that are more tolerant to drought but are slower growing. These results demonstrate concurrent changes in forest species composition and biomass carbon storage across a large, systematically sampled region, and highlight the potential for climate-induced changes in forest ecosystems across the world, resulting from both direct effects of climate on forest biomass and indirect effects mediated by shifts in species composition.
I explore the use of multiple regression on distance matrices (MRM), an extension of partial Mantel analysis, in spatial analysis of ecological data. MRM involves a multiple regression of a response ...matrix on any number of explanatory matrices, where each matrix contains distances or similarities (in terms of ecological, spatial, or other attributes) between all pair-wise combinations of n objects (sample units); tests of statistical significance are performed by permutation. The method is flexible in terms of the types of data that may be analyzed (counts, presence-absence, continuous, categorical) and the shapes of response curves. MRM offers several advantages over traditional partial Mantel analysis: (1) separating environmental distances into distinct distance matrices allows inferences to be made at the level of individual variables; (2) nonparametric or nonlinear multiple regression methods may be employed; and (3) spatial autocorrelation may be quantified and tested at different spatial scales using a series of lag matrices, each representing a geographic distance class. The MRM lag matrices model may be parameterized to yield very similar inferences regarding spatial autocorrelation as the Mantel correlogram. Unlike the correlogram, however, the lag matrices model may also include environmental distance matrices, so that spatial patterns in species abundance distances (community similarity) may be quantified while controlling for the environmental similarity between sites. Examples of spatial analyses with MRM are presented.
Pervasive shifts in forest dynamics in a changing world McDowell, Nate G.; Allen, Craig D.; Anderson-Teixeira, Kristina ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
05/2020, Letnik:
368, Številka:
6494
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Forest dynamics are the processes of recruitment, growth, death, and turnover of the constituent tree species of the forest community. These processes are driven by disturbances both natural and ...anthropogenic. McDowell et al. review recent progress in understanding the drivers of forest dynamics and how these are interacting and changing in the context of global climate change. The authors show that shifts in forest dynamics are already occurring, and the emerging pattern is that global forests are tending toward younger stands with faster turnover as old-growth forest with stable dynamics are dwindling.
The leaf economics spectrum (LES) describes multivariate correlations that constrain leaf traits of plant species primarily to a single axis of variation if data are normalized by leaf mass. We show ...that these traits are approximately distributed proportional to leaf area instead of mass, as expected for a light- and carbon dioxide-collecting organ. Much of the structure in the mass-normalized LES results from normalizing area-proportional traits by mass. Mass normalization induces strong correlations among area-proportional traits because of large variation among species in leaf mass per area (LMA). The high LMA variance likely reflects its functional relationship with leaf life span. A LES that is independent of mass- or area-normalization and LMA reveals physiological relationships that are inconsistent with those in global vegetation models designed to address climate change.
Demographic trade-offs predict tropical forest dynamics Rüger, Nadja; Condit, Richard; Dent, Daisy H ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
04/2020, Letnik:
368, Številka:
6487
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Understanding tropical forest dynamics and planning for their sustainable management require efficient, yet accurate, predictions of the joint dynamics of hundreds of tree species. With increasing ...information on tropical tree life histories, our predictive understanding is no longer limited by species data but by the ability of existing models to make use of it. Using a demographic forest model, we show that the basal area and compositional changes during forest succession in a neotropical forest can be accurately predicted by representing tropical tree diversity (hundreds of species) with only five functional groups spanning two essential trade-offs-the growth-survival and stature-recruitment trade-offs. This data-driven modeling framework substantially improves our ability to predict consequences of anthropogenic impacts on tropical forests.
Climate change is expected to drive increased tree mortality through drought, heat stress, and insect attacks, with manifold impacts on forest ecosystems. Yet, climate-induced tree mortality and ...biotic disturbance agents are largely absent from process-based ecosystem models. Using data sets from the western USA and associated studies, we present a framework for determining the relative contribution of drought stress, insect attack, and their interactions, which is critical for modeling mortality in future climates. We outline a simple approach that identifies the mechanisms associated with two guilds of insects – bark beetles and defoliators – which are responsible for substantial tree mortality. We then discuss cross-biome patterns of insect-driven tree mortality and draw upon available evidence contrasting the prevalence of insect outbreaks in temperate and tropical regions. We conclude with an overview of tools and promising avenues to address major challenges. Ultimately, a multitrophic approach that captures tree physiology, insect populations, and tree–insect interactions will better inform projections of forest ecosystem responses to climate change.
Tropical forests exhibit complex but poorly understood patterns of leaf phenology. Understanding species- and individual-level phenological patterns in tropical forests requires datasets covering ...large numbers of trees, which can be provided by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). In this paper, we test a workflow combining high-resolution RGB images (7 cm/pixel) acquired from UAVs with a machine learning algorithm to monitor tree and species leaf phenology in a tropical forest in Panama. We acquired images for 34 flight dates over a 12-month period. Crown boundaries were digitized in images and linked with forest inventory data to identify species. We evaluated predictions of leaf cover from different models that included up to 14 image features extracted for each crown on each date. The models were trained and tested with visual estimates of leaf cover from 2422 images from 85 crowns belonging to eight species spanning a range of phenological patterns. The best-performing model included both standard color metrics, as well as texture metrics that quantify within-crown variation, with r2 of 0.84 and mean absolute error (MAE) of 7.8% in 10-fold cross-validation. In contrast, the model based only on the widely-used Green Chromatic Coordinate (GCC) index performed relatively poorly (r2 = 0.52, MAE = 13.6%). These results highlight the utility of texture features for image analysis of tropical forest canopies, where illumination changes may diminish the utility of color indices, such as GCC. The algorithm successfully predicted both individual-tree and species patterns, with mean r2 of 0.82 and 0.89 and mean MAE of 8.1% and 6.0% for individual- and species-level analyses, respectively. Our study is the first to develop and test methods for landscape-scale UAV monitoring of individual trees and species in diverse tropical forests. Our analyses revealed undescribed patterns of high intraspecific variation and complex leaf cover changes for some species.
Realistic representation of vegetation's response to drought is important for understanding terrestrial carbon cycling. We evaluated nine Earth system models from the historical experiment of the ...Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 for the response of gross primary productivity (GPP) and leaf area index (LAI) to hydrological anomalies. Hydrological anomalies were characterized by the standardized precipitation index (SPI) and surface soil moisture anomalies (SMA). GPP and LAI in models were on average more responsive to SPI than in observations revealed through several indicators. First, we find higher mean correlations between global annual anomalies of GPP and SPI in models than observations. Second, the maximum correlation between GPP and SPI across 1–24 month time scales is higher in models than observations. And finally, we found stronger excursions of GPP to extreme dry or wet events. Similar to GPP, LAI responded more to SPI in models than observations. The over‐response of models is smaller if evaluated based on SMA instead of SPI. LAI responses to SMA are inconsistent among models, showing both higher and lower LAI when soil moisture is reduced. The time scale of maximum correlation is shorter in models than the observation for GPP, and the markedly different response time scales among models for LAI indicate gaps in understanding how variability of water availability affects foliar cover. The discrepancy of responses derived from SPI and SMA among models, and between models and observations, calls for improvement in understanding the dynamics of plant‐available water in addition to how vegetation responds to these anomalies.
Key Points
Compared to observations, vegetation in CMIP5 models responds stronger to precipitation anomalies
Over‐response of models to hydrological anomalies is smaller if evaluated based on soil moisture anomalies instead of precipitation indices
Further improvements in plant‐available water and response time scales are beneficial for future model development
Overhunting in tropical forests reduces populations of vertebrate seed dispersers. If reduced seed dispersal has a negative impact on tree population viability, overhunting could lead to altered ...forest structure and dynamics, including decreased biodiversity. However, empirical data showing decreased animal-dispersed tree abundance in overhunted forests contradict demographic models which predict minimal sensitivity of tree population growth rate to early life stages. One resolution to this discrepancy is that seed dispersal determines spatial aggregation, which could have demographic consequences for all life stages. We tested the impact of dispersal loss on population viability of a tropical tree species, Miliusa horsfieldii, currently dispersed by an intact community of large mammals in a Thai forest. We evaluated the effect of spatial aggregation for all tree life stages, from seeds to adult trees, and constructed simulation models to compare population viability with and without animal-mediated seed dispersal. In simulated populations, disperser loss increased spatial aggregation by fourfold, leading to increased negative density dependence across the life cycle and a 10-fold increase in the probability of extinction. Given that the majority of tree species in tropical forests are animal-dispersed, overhunting will potentially result in forests that are fundamentally different from those existing now.
Understanding variation in leaf functional traits—including rates of photosynthesis and respiration and concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus—is a fundamental challenge in plant ecophysiology. ...When expressed per unit leaf area, these traits typically increase with leaf mass per area (LMA) within species but are roughly independent of LMA across the global flora. LMA is determined by mass components with different biological functions, including photosynthetic mass that largely determines metabolic rates and contains most nitrogen and phosphorus, and structural mass that affects toughness and leaf lifespan (LL). A possible explanation for the contrasting trait relationships is that most LMA variation within species is associated with variation in photosynthetic mass, whereas most LMA variation across the global flora is associated with variation in structural mass. This hypothesis leads to the predictions that (i) gas exchange rates and nutrient concentrations per unit leaf area should increase strongly with LMA across species assemblages with low LL variance but should increase weakly with LMA across species assemblages with high LL variance and that (ii) controlling for LL variation should increase the strength of the above LMA relationships. We present analyses of intra- and interspecific trait variation from three tropical forest sites and interspecific analyses within functional groups in a global dataset that are consistent with the above predictions. Our analysis suggests that the qualitatively different trait relationships exhibited by different leaf assemblages can be understood by considering the degree to which photosynthetic and structural mass components contribute to LMA variation in a given assemblage.
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