Temperature and rainfall interact to control carbon cycling in tropical forests

Tropical forests dominate global terrestrial carbon (C) exchange, and recent droughts in the Amazon Basin have contributed to short‐term declines in terrestrial carbon dioxide uptake and storage. However, the effects of longer‐term climate variability on tropical forest carbon dynamics are still not...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology letters Vol. 20; no. 6; pp. 779 - 788
Main Authors: Taylor, Philip G., Cleveland, Cory C., Wieder, William R., Sullivan, Benjamin W., Doughty, Christopher E., Dobrowski, Solomon Z., Townsend, Alan R., Liu, Lingli
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: England Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.06.2017
Subjects:
basins
Carbon
Carbon Cycle
Carbon dioxide
Carbon sequestration
Climate
climate change
Climate effects
Climate variability
Decomposition
Drought
Earth atmosphere
ecosystems
Exchanging
Forests
net primary production
Net Primary Productivity
nutrient cycling
Organic matter
Precipitation
primary productivity
rain
Rainfall
River basins
Soil
Temperature
Temperature effects
Trees
Tropical Climate
tropical forest
Tropical forests
Vegetation
Carbon cycle
precipitation
temperature
tropical forest
decomposition
nutrient cycling
climate change
net primary production
ISSN:1461-023X, 1461-0248, 1461-0248
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Tropical forests dominate global terrestrial carbon (C) exchange, and recent droughts in the Amazon Basin have contributed to short‐term declines in terrestrial carbon dioxide uptake and storage. However, the effects of longer‐term climate variability on tropical forest carbon dynamics are still not well understood. We synthesised field data from more than 150 tropical forest sites to explore how climate regulates tropical forest aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) and organic matter decomposition, and combined those data with two existing databases to explore climate – C relationships globally. While previous analyses have focused on the effects of either temperature or rainfall on ANPP, our results highlight the importance of interactions between temperature and rainfall on the C cycle. In cool forests (< 20 °C), high rainfall slowed rates of C cycling, but in warm tropical forests (> 20 °C) it consistently enhanced both ANPP and decomposition. At the global scale, our analysis showed an increase in ANPP with rainfall in relatively warm sites, inconsistent with declines in ANPP with rainfall reported previously. Overall, our results alter our understanding of climate – C cycle relationships, with high precipitation accelerating rates of C exchange with the atmosphere in the most productive biome on earth.
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ISSN:1461-023X
1461-0248
1461-0248
DOI:10.1111/ele.12765