Carbon uptake by mature Amazon forests has mitigated Amazon nations’ carbon emissions

Phillips, Oliver L.; Brienen, Roel J.W.; the RAINFOR collaboration

doi:10.1186/s13021-016-0069-2

Taking the pulse of Earth's tropical forests using networks of highly distributed plots (2021)
Journal Article
van der Heijden, G., Blundo, C., Carilla, J., Grau, R., Malizia, A., Malizia, L., …do Espírito Santo, M. (2021). Taking the pulse of Earth's tropical forests using networks of highly distributed plots. Biological Conservation, 260, Article 108849. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108849

Tropical forests are the most diverse and productive ecosystems on Earth. While better understanding of these forests is critical for our collective future, until quite recently efforts to measure and monitor them have been largely disconnected. Netw... Read More about Taking the pulse of Earth's tropical forests using networks of highly distributed plots.

Remote sensing liana infestation in an aseasonal tropical forest: addressing mismatch in spatial units of analyses (2021)
Journal Article
Chandler, C. J., van der Heijden, G. M. F., Boyd, D. S., Cutler, M. E. J., Costa, H., Nilus, R., & Foody, G. M. (2021). Remote sensing liana infestation in an aseasonal tropical forest: addressing mismatch in spatial units of analyses. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, 7(3), 397-410. https://doi.org/10.1002/rse2.197

The ability to accurately assess liana (woody vine) infestation at the landscape level is essential to quantify their impact on carbon dynamics and help inform targeted forest management and conservation action. Remote sensing techniques provide pote... Read More about Remote sensing liana infestation in an aseasonal tropical forest: addressing mismatch in spatial units of analyses.

Tree mode of death and mortality risk factors across Amazon forests (2020)
Journal Article
Esquivel-Muelbert, A., Phillips, O. L., Brienen, R. J. W., Fauset, S., Sullivan, M. J. P., Baker, T. R., …Galbraith, D. (2020). Tree mode of death and mortality risk factors across Amazon forests. Nature Communications, 11(1), Article 5515. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18996-3

The carbon sink capacity of tropical forests is substantially affected by tree mortality. However, the main drivers of tropical tree death remain largely unknown. Here we present a pan-Amazonian assessment of how and why trees die, analysing over 120... Read More about Tree mode of death and mortality risk factors across Amazon forests.

Causes and consequences of liana infestation in southern Amazonia (2020)
Journal Article
Reis, S. M., Marimon, B. S., Morandi, P. S., Elias, F., Esquivel-Muelbert, A., Marimon Junior, B. H., …Phillips, O. L. (2020). Causes and consequences of liana infestation in southern Amazonia. Journal of Ecology, 108(6), 2184-2197. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13470

© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society Lianas, a key component of tropical forests, can limit growth of trees, impacting both the structure and functioning of forests, and a... Read More about Causes and consequences of liana infestation in southern Amazonia.

Active restoration accelerates the carbon recovery of human-modified tropical forests (2020)
Journal Article
Philipson, C. D., Cutler, M. E. J., Brodrick, P. G., Asner, G. P., Boyd, D. S., Costa, P. M., …Burslem, D. F. R. P. (2020). Active restoration accelerates the carbon recovery of human-modified tropical forests. Science, 369(6505), 838-841. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aay4490

More than half of all tropical forests are degraded by human impacts, leaving them threatened with conversion to agricultural plantations and risking substantial biodiversity and carbon losses. Restoration could accelerate recovery of aboveground car... Read More about Active restoration accelerates the carbon recovery of human-modified tropical forests.

Biased-corrected richness estimates for the Amazonian tree flora (2020)
Journal Article
Feitosa, Y. O., Zartman, C. E., Killeen, T. J., Fine, P. V. A., Guedes, M. C., Barlow, J., …van der Heijden, G. (2020). Biased-corrected richness estimates for the Amazonian tree flora. Scientific Reports, 10(1), Article 10130. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-66686-3

© 2020, The Author(s). Amazonian forests are extraordinarily diverse, but the estimated species richness is very much debated. Here, we apply an ensemble of parametric estimators and a novel technique that includes conspecific spatial aggregation to... Read More about Biased-corrected richness estimates for the Amazonian tree flora.

Long-term thermal sensitivity of Earth's tropical forests (2020)
Journal Article
Erwin, T., Arets, E. J., Costa, F., Sullivan, M. J. P., Lewis, S. L., Affum-Baffoe, K., …Phillips, O. L. (2020). Long-term thermal sensitivity of Earth's tropical forests. Science, 368(6493), 869-874. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaw7578

Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. The sensitivity of tropical forest carbon to climate is a key uncertainty in predi... Read More about Long-term thermal sensitivity of Earth's tropical forests.

Competition influences tree growth, but not mortality, across environmental gradients in Amazonia and tropical Africa (2020)
Journal Article
Rozendaal, D. M., Phillips, O. L., Lewis, S. L., Affum-Baffoe, K., Alvarez Dávila, E., Andrade, A., …Vanderwel, M. C. (2020). Competition influences tree growth, but not mortality, across environmental gradients in Amazonia and tropical Africa. Ecology, https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3052

© 2020 The Authors. Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Ecological Society of America Competition among trees is an important driver of community structure and dynamics in tropical forests. Neighboring trees may impact an individu... Read More about Competition influences tree growth, but not mortality, across environmental gradients in Amazonia and tropical Africa.

Asynchronous Carbon Sink Saturation in African and Amazonian Tropical Forests (2020)
Journal Article
Hubau, W., Lewis, S. L., Phillips, O. L., Affum-Baffoe, K., Beeckman, H., Cuní-Sanchez, A., …Zemagho, L. (2020). Asynchronous Carbon Sink Saturation in African and Amazonian Tropical Forests. Nature, 579(7797), 80-87. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2035-0

© 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited. Structurally intact tropical forests sequestered about half of the global terrestrial carbon uptake over the 1990s and early 2000s, removing about 15 per cent of anthropogenic... Read More about Asynchronous Carbon Sink Saturation in African and Amazonian Tropical Forests.

Rarity of monodominance in hyperdiverse Amazonian forests (2019)
Journal Article
ter Steege, H., Henkel, T. W., Helal, N., Marimon, B. S., Marimon-Junior, B. H., Huth, A., …Melgaço, K. (2019). Rarity of monodominance in hyperdiverse Amazonian forests. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50323-9

Tropical forests are known for their high diversity. Yet, forest patches do occur in the tropics where a single tree species is dominant. Such “monodominant” forests are known from all of the main tropical regions. For Amazonia, we sampled the occurr... Read More about Rarity of monodominance in hyperdiverse Amazonian forests.

The World's Tallest Tropical Tree in Three Dimensions (2019)
Journal Article
Shenkin, A., Chandler, C. J., Boyd, D. S., Jackson, T., Disney, M., Majalap, N., …Malhi, Y. (2019). The World's Tallest Tropical Tree in Three Dimensions. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 2, 1-5. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2019.00032

Here we report the recent discovery of the world's tallest tropical tree (Shorea faguetiana), possibly the world's tallest angiosperm (flowering plant), located in the rainforests of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. In addition, we provide a novel three-dime... Read More about The World's Tallest Tropical Tree in Three Dimensions.

Individual-Based Modeling of Amazon Forests Suggests That Climate Controls Productivity While Traits Control Demography (2019)
Journal Article
Fauset, S., Gloor, M., Fyllas, N. M., Phillips, O. L., Asner, G. P., Baker, T. R., …Malhi, Y. (2019). Individual-Based Modeling of Amazon Forests Suggests That Climate Controls Productivity While Traits Control Demography. Frontiers in Earth Science, 7, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2019.00083

Climate, 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 Tr... Read More about Individual-Based Modeling of Amazon Forests Suggests That Climate Controls Productivity While Traits Control Demography.

Lianas have a seasonal growth advantage over co-occurring trees (2019)
Journal Article
Schnitzer, S. A., & van der Heijden, G. M. (2019). Lianas have a seasonal growth advantage over co-occurring trees. Ecology, 100(5), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2655

© 2019 by the Ecological Society of America The seasonal growth advantage hypothesis posits that plant species that grow well during seasonal drought will increase in abundance in forests with increasing seasonality of rainfall both in absolute numbe... Read More about Lianas have a seasonal growth advantage over co-occurring trees.

Effect of lianas on forest-level tree carbon accumulation does not differ between seasons: Results from a liana removal experiment in Panama (2019)
Journal Article
van der Heijden, G. M., Powers, J. S., & Schnitzer, S. A. (2019). Effect of lianas on forest-level tree carbon accumulation does not differ between seasons: Results from a liana removal experiment in Panama. Journal of Ecology, 107(4), 1890-1900. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13155

1. Lianas are prevalent in Neotropical forests, where liana-tree competition can be intense, resulting in reduced tree growth and survival. The ability of lianas to grow relative to trees during the dry season suggests that liana-tree competition is... Read More about Effect of lianas on forest-level tree carbon accumulation does not differ between seasons: Results from a liana removal experiment in Panama.

A view from above: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide a new tool for assessing liana infestation in tropical forest canopies (2019)
Journal Article
Waite, C. E., van der Heijden, G. M. F., Field, R., & Boyd, D. S. (2019). A view from above: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide a new tool for assessing liana infestation in tropical forest canopies. Journal of Applied Ecology, 56(4), 902-912. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13318

1. Tropical forests store and sequester large quantities of carbon, mitigating climate change. Lianas (woody vines) are important tropical forest components, most conspicuous in the canopy. Lianas reduce forest carbon uptake and their recent incre... Read More about A view from above: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide a new tool for assessing liana infestation in tropical forest canopies.

Compositional response of Amazon forests to climate change (2018)
Journal Article
Esquivel-Muelbert, A., Baker, T. R., Dexter, K. G., Lewis, S. L., Brienen, R., Feldpausch, T. R., …van der Heijden, G. (2019). Compositional response of Amazon forests to climate change. Global Change Biology, 25(1), 39-56. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14413

Most of the planet’s diversity is concentrated in the tropics, which includes many regions undergoing rapid climate change. Yet, while climate-induced biodiversity changes are widely documented elsewhere, few studies have addressed this issue for low... Read More about Compositional response of Amazon forests to climate change.

Environmental drivers of forest structure and stem turnover across Venezuelan tropical forests (2018)
Journal Article
Vilanova, E., Ramírez-Angulo, H., Torres-Lezama, A., Aymard, G., Gámez, L., Durán, C., Hernández, L., Herrera, R., van der Heijden, G., Phillips, O. L., & Ettl, G. J. (2018). Environmental drivers of forest structure and stem turnover across Venezuelan tropical forests. PLoS ONE, 13(6), Article e0198489. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0198489

Using data from 50 long-term permanent plots from across Venezuelan forests in northern South America, we explored large-scale patterns of stem turnover, aboveground biomass (AGB) and woody productivity (AGWP), and the relationships between them and... Read More about Environmental drivers of forest structure and stem turnover across Venezuelan tropical forests.

Species distribution modelling: contrasting presence-only models with plot abundance data (2018)
Journal Article
Gomes, V. H., IJff, S. D., Raes, N., Amaral, I. L., Salomão, R. P., de Souza Coelho, L., …ter Steege, H. (in press). Species distribution modelling: contrasting presence-only models with plot abundance data. Scientific Reports, 8(1), Article 1003. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-18927-1

Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used in ecology and conservation. Presence-only SDMs such as MaxEnt frequently use natural history collections (NHCs) as occurrence data, given their huge numbers and accessibility. NHCs are often spatial... Read More about Species distribution modelling: contrasting presence-only models with plot abundance data.

Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition (2017)
Journal Article
Levis, C., Costa, F. R., Bongers, F., Peña-Claros, M., Clement, C. R., Junqueira, A. B., …ter Steege, H. (2017). Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition. Science, 355(6328), 925-931. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aal0157

The extent to which pre-Columbian societies altered Amazonian landscapes is hotly debated. We performed a basin-wide analysis of pre-Columbian impacts on Amazonian forests by overlaying known archaeological sites in Amazonia with the distributions an... Read More about Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition.

Carbon uptake by mature Amazon forests has mitigated Amazon nations’ carbon emissions (2017)
Journal Article
Phillips, O. L., Brienen, R. J., & the RAINFOR collaboration. (2017). Carbon uptake by mature Amazon forests has mitigated Amazon nations’ carbon emissions. Carbon Balance and Management, 12(1), https://doi.org/10.1186/s13021-016-0069-2

© 2017 The Author(s). Background: Several independent lines of evidence suggest that Amazon forests have provided a significant carbon sink service, and also that the Amazon carbon sink in intact, mature forests may now be threatened as a result of d... Read More about Carbon uptake by mature Amazon forests has mitigated Amazon nations’ carbon emissions.

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