Basin-wide variation in tree hydraulic safety margins predicts the carbon balance of Amazon forests

Tropical forests face increasing climate risk1,2, yet our ability to predict their response to climate change is limited by poor understanding of their resistance to water stress. Although xylem embolism resistance thresholds (for example, [Formula: see text]50) and hydraulic safety margins (for example, HSM50) are important predictors of drought-induced mortality risk3-5, little is known about how these vary across Earth's largest tropical forest. Here, we present a pan-Amazon, fully standardized hydraulic traits dataset and use it to assess regional variation in drought sensitivity and hydraulic trait ability to predict species distributions and long-term forest biomass accumulation. Parameters [Formula: see text]50 and HSM50 vary markedly across the Amazon and are related to average long-term rainfall characteristics. Both [Formula: see text]50 and HSM50 influence the biogeographical distribution of Amazon tree species. However, HSM50 was the only significant predictor of observed decadal-scale changes in forest biomass. Old-growth forests with wide HSM50 are gaining more biomass than are low HSM50 forests. We propose that this may be associated with a growth-mortality trade-off whereby trees in forests consisting of fast-growing species take greater hydraulic risks and face greater mortality risk. Moreover, in regions of more pronounced climatic change, we find evidence that forests are losing biomass, suggesting that species in these regions may be operating beyond their hydraulic limits. Continued climate change is likely to further reduce HSM50 in the Amazon6,7, with strong implications for the Amazon carbon sink.

Tree mode of death and mortality risk factors across Amazon forests

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 120,000 trees representing > 3800 species from 189 long-term RAINFOR forest plots. While tree mortality rates vary greatly Amazon-wide, on average trees are as likely to die standing as they are broken or uprooted-modes of death with different ecological consequences. Species-level growth rate is the single most important predictor of tree death in Amazonia, with faster-growing species being at higher risk. Within species, however, the slowest-growing trees are at greatest risk while the effect of tree size varies across the basin. In the driest Amazonian region species-level bioclimatic distributional patterns also predict the risk of death, suggesting that these forests are experiencing climatic conditions beyond their adaptative limits. These results provide not only a holistic pan-Amazonian picture of tree death but large-scale evidence for the overarching importance of the growth-survival trade-off in driving tropical tree mortality.

Compositional response of Amazon forests to climate change

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 lowland tropical ecosystems. Here we investigate whether the floristic and functional composition of intact lowland Amazonian forests have been changing by evaluating records from 106 long-term inventory plots spanning 30 years. We analyse three traits that have been hypothesized to respond to different environmental drivers (increase in moisture stress and atmospheric CO₂ concentrations): maximum tree size, biogeographic water-deficit affiliation and wood density. Tree communities have become increasingly dominated by large-statured taxa, but to date there has been no detectable change in mean wood density or water deficit affiliation at the community level, despite most forest plots having experienced an intensification of the dry season. However, among newly recruited trees, dry-affiliated genera have become more abundant, while the mortality of wet-affiliated genera has increased in those plots where the dry season has intensified most. Thus, a slow shift to a more dry-affiliated Amazonia is underway, with changes in compositional dynamics (recruits and mortality) consistent with climate-change drivers, but yet to significantly impact whole-community composition. The Amazon observational record suggests that the increase in atmospheric CO₂ is driving a shift within tree communities to large-statured species and that climate changes to date will impact forest composition, but long generation times of tropical trees mean that biodiversity change is lagging behind climate change.

Low stocks of coarse woody debris in a southwest Amazonian forest

The stocks and dynamics of coarse woody debris (CWD) are significant components of the carbon cycle within tropical forests. However, to date, there have been no reports of CWD stocks and fluxes from the approximately 1.3 million km(2) of lowland western Amazonian forests. Here, we present estimates of CWD stocks and annual CWD inputs from forests in southern Peru. Total stocks were low compared to other tropical forest sites, whether estimated by line-intercept sampling (24.4 +/- 5.3 Mg ha(-1)) or by complete inventories within 11 permanent plots (17.7 +/- 2.4 Mg ha(-1)). However, annual inputs, estimated from long-term data on tree mortality rates in the same plots, were similar to other studies (3.8 +/- 0.2 or 2.9 +/- 0.2 Mg ha(-1) year(-1), depending on the equation used to estimate biomass). Assuming the CWD pool is at steady state, the turnover time of coarse woody debris is low (4.7 +/- 2.6 or 6.1 +/- 2.6 years). These results indicate that these sites have not experienced a recent, large-scale disturbance event and emphasise the distinctive, rapid nature of carbon cycling in these western Amazonian forests.