Journal article
Detecting vulnerability of humid tropical forests to multiple stressors
ONE EARTH, v 4(7), pp 988-1003
23 Jul 2021
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Humid tropical forests play a dominant role in the functioning of Earth but are under increasing threat from changes in land use and climate. How forest vulnerability varies across space and time and what level of stress forests can tolerate before facing a tipping point are poorly understood. Here, we develop a tropical forest vulnerability index (TFVI) to detect and evaluate the vulnerability of global tropical forests to threats across space and time. We show that climate change together with land-use change have slowed the recovery rate of forest carbon cycling. Temporal autocorrelation, as an indicator of this slow recovery, increases substantially for above-ground biomass, gross primary production, and evapotranspiration when climate stress reaches a critical level. Forests in the Americas exhibit extensive vulnerability to these stressors, while in Africa, forests show relative resilience to climate, and in Asia reveal more vulnerability to land use and fragmentation. TFVI can systematically track the response of tropical forests to multiple stressors and provide early-warning signals for regions undergoing critical transitions.
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Details
- Title
- Detecting vulnerability of humid tropical forests to multiple stressors
- Publication Details
- ONE EARTH, v 4(7), pp 988-1003
- Publisher
- CELL PRESS; CAMBRIDGE
- Number of pages
- 15
- Grant note
- This project was organized by the National Geographic Society and supported by Rolex as part of its Perpetual Planet initiative. Aconvening to bring together all co-authors took place at National Geographic headquarters in October2019, to formulate this work; we thank Jonathan Baillie for helpful ideas on structuring the work and convening, Alexis Bahl for logistics and support, Erin Martin for facilitating, and Sandra Elvin for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Part of this work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Cal-ifornia Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) . Y.Y. and M.L. were supported by the NASA Postdoctoral Program, administered by Universities Space Research Associ-ation under contract with NASA; L.X. was partially supported by NASA's Terrestrial Ecology and Carbon Cycle (16-CARBON16-0130) and S.S. by NASA's Interdisciplinary Science program (N6IDS160059) .
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Drexel University
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000678340300015
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85110635689
- Other Identifier
- 991021860660504721
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Environmental Sciences
- Environmental Studies
- Green & Sustainable Science & Technology