Functional susceptibility of tropical forests to climate change
Functional susceptibility of tropical forests to climate change
复制标题
DOI：
10.1038/s41559-022-01747-6
复制
发表时间：
2022-05
影响因子：
16.8
通讯作者：
J. Aguirre‐Gutiérrez;E. Berenguer;Imma Oliveras Menor;D. Bauman;J. Corral-Rivas;M. G. Nava-Miranda
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
J. Aguirre‐Gutiérrez;E. Berenguer;Imma Oliveras Menor;D. Bauman;J. Corral-Rivas;M. G. Nava-Miranda
热带森林是世界上生物多样性最丰富的生态系统之一，但它们的功能受到人为干扰和气候变化的威胁。保护热带雨林的全球行动可以通过了解森林、ʼ功能多样性和功能冗余作为其应对全球环境变化能力的代表来加强。在这里，我们通过将来自四大洲74个地点的2461棵树的16个形态、化学和光合作用植物性状的数据集与过去半个世纪的当地气候数据结合起来，创建了对热带地区植物功能多样性和冗余度的估计。我们的发现表明，气候与功能多样性和冗余性之间有很强的联系，热带和气候梯度的三个特征组的反应相似。我们的研究表明，与湿润的森林相比，干旱的热带森林总体上功能多样性较低，而且功能冗余随着土壤水分和水汽压力亏缺的增加而下降。在极端天气事件发生后，功能多样性高和功能冗余度高的地区往往能更好地维持生态系统功能，如地上生物量。我们的预测表明，与湿润的森林相比，干燥的热带森林的功能多样性和功能冗余度较低，这可能会使它们面临更大的风险，即在整个热带地区可用水进一步下降的情况下，转向替代状态。
Tropical forests are some of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world, yet their functioning is threatened by anthropogenic disturbances and climate change. Global actions to conserve tropical forests could be enhanced by having local knowledge on the forestsʼ functional diversity and functional redundancy as proxies for their capacity to respond to global environmental change. Here we create estimates of plant functional diversity and redundancy across the tropics by combining a dataset of 16 morphological, chemical and photosynthetic plant traits sampled from 2,461 individual trees from 74 sites distributed across four continents together with local climate data for the past half century. Our findings suggest a strong link between climate and functional diversity and redundancy with the three trait groups responding similarly across the tropics and climate gradient. We show that drier tropical forests are overall less functionally diverse than wetter forests and that functional redundancy declines with increasing soil water and vapour pressure deficits. Areas with high functional diversity and high functional redundancy tend to better maintain ecosystem functioning, such as aboveground biomass, after extreme weather events. Our predictions suggest that the lower functional diversity and lower functional redundancy of drier tropical forests, in comparison with wetter forests, may leave them more at risk of shifting towards alternative states in face of further declines in water availability across tropical regions.