Fingerprinting the impacts of global change on tropical forests
Fingerprinting the impacts of global change on tropical forests
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DOI：
10.1098/rstb.2003.1432
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发表时间：
2004-03-29
影响因子：
6.3
通讯作者：
Phillips, OL
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Lewis, SL;Malhi, Y;Phillips, OL
最近对成熟热带森林的广泛变化，如树木生长、补充和死亡率增加以及地上生物量增加的观察表明，“全球变化”因素可能正在热带森林造成可预测的变化。然而，对于这些变化的稳健性以及可能导致这些变化的环境驱动因素尚未达成共识。本文重点讨论这场辩论的第二部分。我们回顾（一）的证据表明，热带树木生长的物理，化学和生物环境已经改变了近几十年来在大面积的热带地区，和（二）的理论，实验和观测证据的最可能的影响，这些变化对热带森林。确定了10个潜在的广泛的环境变化驱动因素：温度、降水、太阳辐射、极端气候（包括厄尔尼诺-南方涛动事件）、大气CO2浓度、养分沉积、臭氧/酸沉积、狩猎、土地使用变化和藤本植物数量增加。我们注意到，这些环境变化中的每一种都将在热带森林中留下独特的“指纹”，因为驱动因素直接推动不同的过程，在空间和时间上具有不同的分布，并且可能对某些森林的影响大于其他森林（例如，取决于土壤肥力）。因此，在本文的第三部分，我们提出了可测试的先验预测的森林响应，以帮助生态学家在多个数据集的特定原因归因于森林的特定变化。最后，我们讨论了这些驱动因素在未来可能如何变化以及对热带森林可能产生的后果。
Recent observations of widespread changes in mature tropical forests such as increasing tree growth, recruitment and mortality rates and increasing above-ground biomass suggest that 'global change' agents may be causing predictable changes in tropical forests. However, consensus over both the robustness of these changes and the environmental drivers that may be causing them is yet to emerge. This paper focuses on the second part of this debate. We review (i) the evidence that the physical, chemical and biological environment that tropical trees grow in has been altered over recent decades across large areas of the tropics, and (ii) the theoretical, experimental and observational evidence regarding the most likely effects of each of these changes on tropical forests. Ten potential widespread drivers of environmental change were identified: temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, climatic extremes (including El Nino-Southern Oscillation events), atmospheric CO2 concentrations, nutrient deposition, O-3/acid depositions, hunting, land-use change and increasing liana numbers. We note that each of these environmental changes is expected to leave a unique 'fingerprint' in tropical forests, as drivers directly force different processes, have different distributions in space and time and may affect some forests more than others (e.g. depending on soil fertility). Thus, in the third part of the paper we present testable a priori predictions of forest responses to assist ecologists in attributing particular changes in forests to particular causes across multiple datasets. Finally, we discuss how these drivers may change in the future and the possible consequences for tropical forests.