8 documents found, page 1 of 1
Do species traits determine patterns of wood production in Amazonian forests?
Baker, Timothy R.; Phillips, Oliver L.; Laurance, William F.; Pitman, Nigel C.A.; Almeida, Samuel Miranda; Arroyo, Luzmila P.; Di Fiore, AnthonyUnderstanding the relationships between plant traits and ecosystem properties at large spatial scales is important for predicting how compositional change will affect carbon cycling in tropical forests. In this study, we examine the relationships between species wood density, maximum height and above-ground, coarse wood production of trees ≥10 cm diameter (CWP) for 60 Amazonian forest plots. Average species max...
Basin-wide variations in Amazon forest structure and function are mediated by b...
Quesada, Carlos Alberto; Phillips, Oliver L.; Schwarz, Michael; Czimczik, Claudia I.; Baker, Timothy R.; Patiño, Sandra; Fyllas, Nikolaos M.Forest structure and dynamics vary across the Amazon Basin in an east-west gradient coincident with variations in soil fertility and geology. This has resulted in the hypothesis that soil fertility may play an important role in explaining Basin-wide variations in forest biomass, growth and stem turnover rates. Soil samples were collected in a total of 59 different forest plots across the Amazon Basin and analys...
Individual-based modeling of amazon forests suggests that climate controls prod...
Fauset, Sophie; Gloor, Manuel U.; Fyllas, Nikolaos M.; Phillips, Oliver L.; Asner, Gregory P.; Baker, Timothy R.; Patrick Bentley, LisaClimate, species composition, and soils are thought to control carbon cycling and forest structure in Amazonian forests. Here, we add a demographics scheme (tree recruitment, growth, and mortality) to a recently developed non-demographic model—the Trait-based Forest Simulator (TFS)—to explore the roles of climate and plant traits in controlling forest productivity and structure. We compared two sites with diffe...
Spatial distribution and functional significance of leaf lamina shape in Amazon...
Malhado, Ana Cláudia Mendes; Whittaker, Robert J.; Malhi, Yadvinder Singh; Ladle, Richard James; ter Steege, H.; Butt, Nathalie; Aragao, L. E.O.C.Leaves in tropical forests come in an enormous variety of sizes and shapes, each of which can be ultimately viewed as an adaptation to the complex problem of optimising the capture of light for photosynthesis. However, the fact that many different shape "strategies" coexist within a habitat demonstrate that there are many other intrinsic and extrinsic factors involved, such as the differential investment in sup...
Drought-mortality relationships for tropical forests
Phillips, Oliver L.; Van Der Heijden, Geertje M.F.; Lewis, Simon L.; Lopez-Gonzalez, Gabriela; Aragao, L. E.O.C.; Lloyd, Jon; Malhi, Yadvinder SinghThe rich ecology of tropical forests is intimately tied to their moisture status. Multi-site syntheses can provide a macro-scale view of these linkages and their susceptibility to changing climates. Here, we report pan-tropical and regional-scale analyses of tree vulnerability to drought. We assembled available data on tropical forest tree stem mortality before, during, and after recent drought events, from 119...
Spatial trends in leaf size of amazonian rainforest trees
Malhado, Ana Cláudia Mendes; Malhi, Yadvinder Singh; Whittaker, Robert J.; Ladle, Richard James; ter Steege, H.; Phillips, Oliver L.; Butt, NathalieLeaf size influences many aspects of tree function such as rates of transpiration and photosynthesis and, consequently, often varies in a predictable way in response to environmental gradients. The recent development of pan-Amazonian databases based on permanent botanical plots has now made it possible to assess trends in leaf size across environmental gradients in Amazonia. Previous plot-based studies have sho...
Consistent, small effects of treefall disturbances on the composition and diver...
Baker, Timothy R.; Vela Díaz, Dilys M.; Chama Moscoso, Victor; Navarro, Gilberto; Monteagudo, Abel Lorenzo; Pinto, Ruy; Cangani, Katia GigliolaUnderstanding the resilience of moist tropical forests to treefall disturbance events is important for understanding the mechanisms that underlie species coexistence and for predicting the future composition of these ecosystems. Here, we test whether variation in the functional composition of Amazonian forests determines their resilience to disturbance. We studied the legacy of natural treefall disturbance even...
Variation in stem mortality rates determines patterns of above-ground biomass i...
Johnson, Michelle O.; Galbraith, David R.; Gloor, Manuel E.; Deurwaerder, Hannes de; Guimberteau, Matthieu; Rammig, Anja; Thonicke, KirstenUnderstanding the processes that determine above-ground biomass (AGB) in Amazonian forests is important for predicting the sensitivity of these ecosystems to environmental change and for designing and evaluating dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs). AGB is determined by inputs from woody productivity [woody net primary productivity (NPP)] and the rate at which carbon is lost through tree mortality. Here, we...