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Chiappero MF, Rossetti MR, Moreno ML, Pérez-Harguindeguy N. A global meta-analysis reveals a consistent reduction of soil fauna abundance and richness as a consequence of land use conversion. THE SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT 2024; 946:173822. [PMID: 38906293 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173822] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/08/2024] [Revised: 06/04/2024] [Accepted: 06/05/2024] [Indexed: 06/23/2024]
Abstract
Land use conversion of natural to production systems is one of the most important threats to belowground communities and to the key ecosystem processes in which they are involved. Available literature shows positive, negative, and neutral effects of land use changes on soil fauna communities; and these varying effects may be due to different characteristics of natural and production systems and soil organisms. We hypothesize that land conversion from high to low plant biomass, diversity, and structural complexity systems may have the most negative impacts on soil fauna. Here, we performed the first meta-analysis evaluating the overall effects of land use conversion on soil invertebrate communities and the influence of factors related to characteristics of natural and production systems, of soil fauna communities and methods. We compiled a dataset of 260 publications that yielded 1732 observations for soil fauna abundance and 459 for richness. Both abundance and richness showed a global decline as a consequence of natural land conversion to production systems. These negative effects were stronger, in general, when the conversion occurred in tropical and subtropical sites, and when natural systems were replaced by croplands, pastures and grazing systems. The effects of land use conversion also depended on soil property changes. In addition, the abundance of most taxa and richness of Acari and Collembola were strongly reduced by land use changes while Annelida were not affected. The highest reduction in abundance was recorded in omnivores and predators, whereas detritivores showed a reduction in richness. Our meta-analysis shows consistent evidence of soil biodiversity decline due to different land use changes and the partial dependence of those effects on the magnitude of changes in vegetation. These findings stress the need to continue developing production modes that effectively preserve soil biodiversity and ecosystem processes, without hampering food production.
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Affiliation(s)
- María Fernanda Chiappero
- Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal (IMBIV), CONICET-Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina
| | - María Rosa Rossetti
- Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal (IMBIV), CONICET-Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina.
| | - María Laura Moreno
- Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas (INECOA), CONICET - Universidad Nacional de Jujuy, Argentina
| | - Natalia Pérez-Harguindeguy
- Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal (IMBIV), CONICET-Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina; Departamento de Diversidad Biológica y Ecología, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina
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Csillik O, Keller M, Longo M, Ferraz A, Rangel Pinagé E, Görgens EB, Ometto JP, Silgueiro V, Brown D, Duffy P, Cushman KC, Saatchi S. A large net carbon loss attributed to anthropogenic and natural disturbances in the Amazon Arc of Deforestation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2024; 121:e2310157121. [PMID: 39102539 PMCID: PMC11331119 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2310157121] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/20/2023] [Accepted: 06/26/2024] [Indexed: 08/07/2024] Open
Abstract
The Amazon forest contains globally important carbon stocks, but in recent years, atmospheric measurements suggest that it has been releasing more carbon than it has absorbed because of deforestation and forest degradation. Accurately attributing the sources of carbon loss to forest degradation and natural disturbances remains a challenge because of the difficulty of classifying disturbances and simultaneously estimating carbon changes. We used a unique, randomized, repeated, very high-resolution airborne laser scanning survey to provide a direct, detailed, and high-resolution partitioning of aboveground carbon gains and losses in the Brazilian Arc of Deforestation. Our analysis revealed that disturbances directly attributed to human activity impacted 4.2% of the survey area while windthrows and other disturbances affected 2.7% and 14.7%, respectively. Extrapolating the lidar-based statistics to the study area (544,300 km2), we found that 24.1, 24.2, and 14.5 Tg C y-1 were lost through clearing, fires, and logging, respectively. The losses due to large windthrows (21.5 Tg C y-1) and other disturbances (50.3 Tg C y-1) were partially counterbalanced by forest growth (44.1 Tg C y-1). Our high-resolution estimates demonstrated a greater loss of carbon through forest degradation than through deforestation and a net loss of carbon of 90.5 ± 16.6 Tg C y-1 for the study region attributable to both anthropogenic and natural processes. This study highlights the role of forest degradation in the carbon balance for this critical region in the Earth system.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ovidiu Csillik
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA91109
| | - Michael Keller
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA91109
- International Institute of Tropical Forestry, United Stated Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service, Río Piedras00926, Puerto Rico
| | - Marcos Longo
- Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA94720
| | - Antonio Ferraz
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA91109
| | | | - Eric Bastos Görgens
- Department of Forest Engineering, Universidade Federal dos Vales do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri, Diamantina, MG39100-000, Brazil
| | - Jean P. Ometto
- Earth System Sciences Center, National Institute for Space Research-National Institute for Space Research (INPE), São José dos Campos, SP12227-010, Brazil
| | | | - David Brown
- Neptune and Company, Inc., Lakewood, CO80215
| | - Paul Duffy
- Neptune and Company, Inc., Lakewood, CO80215
| | - K. C. Cushman
- Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN37830
| | - Sassan Saatchi
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA91109
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Xu S, Gu C, Rodrigues JLM, Li C, Bohannan B, Nüsslein K, Margenot AJ. Soil phosphorus cycling across a 100-year deforestation chronosequence in the Amazon rainforest. GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY 2024; 30:e17077. [PMID: 38273583 DOI: 10.1111/gcb.17077] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/08/2023] [Revised: 11/09/2023] [Accepted: 11/13/2023] [Indexed: 01/27/2024]
Abstract
Deforestation of tropical rainforests is a major land use change that alters terrestrial biogeochemical cycling at local to global scales. Deforestation and subsequent reforestation are likely to impact soil phosphorus (P) cycling, which in P-limited ecosystems such as the Amazon basin has implications for long-term productivity. We used a 100-year replicated observational chronosequence of primary forest conversion to pasture, as well as a 13-year-old secondary forest, to test land use change and duration effects on soil P dynamics in the Amazon basin. By combining sequential extraction and P K-edge X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy with soil phosphatase activity assays, we assessed pools and process rates of P cycling in surface soils (0-10 cm depth). Deforestation caused increases in total P (135-398 mg kg-1 ), total organic P (Po ) (19-168 mg kg-1 ), and total inorganic P (Pi ) (30-113 mg kg-1 ) fractions in surface soils with pasture age, with concomitant increases in Pi fractions corroborated by sequential fractionation and XANES spectroscopy. Soil non-labile Po (10-148 mg kg-1 ) increased disproportionately compared to labile Po (from 4-5 to 7-13 mg kg-1 ). Soil phosphomonoesterase and phosphodiesterase binding affinity (Km ) decreased while the specificity constant (Ka ) increased by 83%-159% in 39-100y pastures. Soil P pools and process rates reverted to magnitudes similar to primary forests within 13 years of pasture abandonment. However, the relatively short but representative pre-abandonment pasture duration of our secondary forest may not have entailed significant deforestation effects on soil P cycling, highlighting the need to consider both pasture duration and reforestation age in evaluations of Amazon land use legacies. Although the space-for-time substitution design can entail variation in the initial soil P pools due to atmospheric P deposition, soil properties, and/or primary forest growth, the trend of P pools and process rates with pasture age still provides valuable insights.
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Affiliation(s)
- Suwei Xu
- Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
| | - Chunhao Gu
- Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, Delaware Environmental Institute, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA
| | - Jorge L M Rodrigues
- Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, University of California Davis, Davis, California, USA
- Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Chongyang Li
- Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
| | - Brendan Bohannan
- Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA
| | - Klaus Nüsslein
- Department of Microbiology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Andrew J Margenot
- Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
- Agroecosystem Sustainability Center (ASC), Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment (iSEE), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
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Wang H, Ciais P, Sitch S, Green JK, Tao S, Fu Z, Albergel C, Bastos A, Wang M, Fawcett D, Frappart F, Li X, Liu X, Li S, Wigneron JP. Anthropogenic disturbance exacerbates resilience loss in the Amazon rainforests. GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY 2024; 30:e17006. [PMID: 37909670 DOI: 10.1111/gcb.17006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/05/2023] [Revised: 09/03/2023] [Accepted: 10/10/2023] [Indexed: 11/03/2023]
Abstract
Uncovering the mechanisms that lead to Amazon forest resilience variations is crucial to predict the impact of future climatic and anthropogenic disturbances. Here, we apply a previously used empirical resilience metrics, lag-1 month temporal autocorrelation (TAC), to vegetation optical depth data in C-band (a good proxy of the whole canopy water content) in order to explore how forest resilience variations are impacted by human disturbances and environmental drivers in the Brazilian Amazon. We found that human disturbances significantly increase the risk of critical transitions, and that the median TAC value is ~2.4 times higher in human-disturbed forests than that in intact forests, suggesting a much lower resilience in disturbed forests. Additionally, human-disturbed forests are less resilient to land surface heat stress and atmospheric water stress than intact forests. Among human-disturbed forests, forests with a more closed and thicker canopy structure, which is linked to a higher forest cover and a lower disturbance fraction, are comparably more resilient. These results further emphasize the urgent need to limit deforestation and degradation through policy intervention to maintain the resilience of the Amazon rainforests.
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Affiliation(s)
- Huan Wang
- College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China
- INRAE, UMR1391 ISPA, Université de Bordeaux, Villenave d'Ornon, France
- Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, CEA/CNRS/UVSQ/Université Paris Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
| | - Philippe Ciais
- Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, CEA/CNRS/UVSQ/Université Paris Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
| | - Stephen Sitch
- College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
| | - Julia K Green
- Department of Environmental Science, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA
| | - Shengli Tao
- College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China
| | - Zheng Fu
- Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, CEA/CNRS/UVSQ/Université Paris Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
| | | | - Ana Bastos
- Department of Biogeochemical Integration, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany
| | - Mengjia Wang
- School of Geoscience and Technology, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China
| | - Dominic Fawcett
- College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
- Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland
| | - Frédéric Frappart
- INRAE, UMR1391 ISPA, Université de Bordeaux, Villenave d'Ornon, France
| | - Xiaojun Li
- INRAE, UMR1391 ISPA, Université de Bordeaux, Villenave d'Ornon, France
| | - Xiangzhuo Liu
- INRAE, UMR1391 ISPA, Université de Bordeaux, Villenave d'Ornon, France
| | - Shuangcheng Li
- College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China
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Butt EW, Baker JCA, Bezerra FGS, von Randow C, Aguiar APD, Spracklen DV. Amazon deforestation causes strong regional warming. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2023; 120:e2309123120. [PMID: 37903256 PMCID: PMC10636322 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2309123120] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/31/2023] [Accepted: 08/30/2023] [Indexed: 11/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Tropical deforestation impacts the climate through complex land-atmosphere interactions causing local and regional warming. However, whilst the impacts of deforestation on local temperature are well understood, the regional (nonlocal) response is poorly quantified. Here, we used remote-sensed observations of forest loss and dry season land-surface temperature during the period 2001 to 2020 to demonstrate that deforestation of the Amazon caused strong warming at distances up to 100 km away from the forest loss. We apply a machine learning approach to show nonlocal warming due to forest loss at 2-100 km length scales increases the warming due to deforestation by more than a factor 4, from 0.16 K to 0.71 K for each 10-percentage points of forest loss. We estimate that rapid future deforestation under a strong inequality scenario could cause dry season warming of 0.96 K across Mato Grosso state in southern Brazil over the period 2020 to 2050. Reducing deforestation could reduce future warming caused by forest loss to 0.4 K. Our results demonstrate the contribution of tropical deforestation to regional climate warming and the potential for reduced deforestation to deliver regional climate adaptation and resilience with important implications for sustainable management of the Amazon.
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Affiliation(s)
- Edward W. Butt
- Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, LeedsLS2 9JT, United Kingdom
| | - Jessica C. A. Baker
- Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, LeedsLS2 9JT, United Kingdom
| | | | - Celso von Randow
- INPE - Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, São José dos Campos12227-010, Brazil
| | - Ana P. D. Aguiar
- INPE - Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, São José dos Campos12227-010, Brazil
- Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm106 91, Sweden
| | - Dominick V. Spracklen
- Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, LeedsLS2 9JT, United Kingdom
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McNicol IM, Keane A, Burgess ND, Bowers SJ, Mitchard ETA, Ryan CM. Protected areas reduce deforestation and degradation and enhance woody growth across African woodlands. COMMUNICATIONS EARTH & ENVIRONMENT 2023; 4:392. [PMID: 38665189 PMCID: PMC11041809 DOI: 10.1038/s43247-023-01053-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/13/2023] [Accepted: 10/13/2023] [Indexed: 04/28/2024]
Abstract
Protected areas are increasingly promoted for their capacity to sequester carbon, alongside biodiversity benefits. However, we have limited understanding of whether they are effective at reducing deforestation and degradation, or promoting vegetation growth, and the impact that this has on changes to aboveground woody carbon stocks. Here we present a new satellite radar-based map of vegetation carbon change across southern Africa's woodlands and combine this with a matching approach to assess the effect of protected areas on carbon dynamics. We show that protection has a positive effect on aboveground carbon, with stocks increasing faster in protected areas (+0.53% per year) compared to comparable lands not under protection (+0.08% per year). The positive effect of protection reflects lower rates of deforestation (-39%) and degradation (-25%), as well as a greater prevalence of vegetation growth (+12%) inside protected lands. Areas under strict protection had similar outcomes to other types of protection after controlling for differences in location, with effect scores instead varying more by country, and the level of threat. These results highlight the potential for protected areas to sequester aboveground carbon, although we caution that in some areas this may have negative impacts on biodiversity, and human wellbeing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Iain M. McNicol
- School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3FF UK
| | - Aidan Keane
- School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3FF UK
| | - Neil D. Burgess
- United Nations Environment Programme – World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), Cambridge, CB3 0DL UK
- Centre for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Natural History Museum, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - Samuel J. Bowers
- School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3FF UK
| | | | - Casey M. Ryan
- School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3FF UK
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