Canopy functional trait variation across Earth’s tropical forests
Abstract
Abstract Tropical forest canopies are the biosphere’s most concentrated atmospheric interface for carbon, water and energy1,2. However, in most Earth System Models, the diverse and heterogeneous tropical forest biome is represented as a largely uniform ecosystem with either a singular or a small number of fixed canopy ecophysiological properties3. This situation arises, in part, from a lack of understanding about how and why the functional properties of tropical forest canopies vary geographically4. Here, by combining field-collected data from more than 1,800 vegetation plots and tree traits with satellite remote-sensing, terrain, climate and soil data, we predict variation across 13 morphological, structural and chemical functional traits of trees, and use this to compute and map the functional diversity of tropical forests. Our findings reveal that the tropical Americas, Africa and Asia tend to occupy different portions of the total functional trait space available across tropical forests. Tropical American forests are predicted to have 40% greater functional richness than tropical African and Asian forests. Meanwhile, African forests have the highest functional divergence—32% and 7% higher than that of tropical American and Asian forests, respectively. An uncertainty analysis highlights priority regions for further data collection, which would refine and improve these maps. Our predictions represent a ground-based and remotely enabled global analysis of how and why the functional traits of tropical forest canopies vary across space.
Article Details
Authors (119)
Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez
Sami W. Rifai
Xiongjie Deng
Hans ter Steege
Eleanor Thomson
Jose Javier Corral-Rivas
Aretha Franklin Guimaraes
Sandra Muller
Joice Klipel
Sophie Fauset
Angelica F. Resende
Göran Wallin
Carlos A. Joly
Katharine Abernethy
Stephen Adu-Bredu
Celice Alexandre Silva
Edmar Almeida de Oliveira
Danilo R. A. Almeida
Esteban Alvarez-Davila
Gregory P. Asner
Timothy R. Baker
Maíra Benchimol
Lisa Patrick Bentley
Erika Berenguer
Lilian Blanc
Damien Bonal
Kauane Bordin
Robson Borges de Lima
Sabine Both
Jaime Cabezas Duarte
Domingos Cardoso
Haroldo C. de Lima
Larissa Cavalheiro
Lucas A. Cernusak
Nayane Cristina C. dos Santos Prestes
Antonio Carlos da Silva Zanzini
Ricardo José da Silva
Robson dos Santos Alves da Silva
Mariana de Andrade Iguatemy
Tony César De Sousa Oliveira
Benjamin Dechant
Géraldine Derroire
Kyle G. Dexter
Domingos J. Rodrigues
Mário Espírito-Santo
Letícia Fernandes Silva
Tomas Ferreira Domingues
Joice Ferreira
Marcelo Fragomeni Simon
Cécile A. J. Girardin
Bruno Hérault
Kathryn J. Jeffery
Sreejith Kalpuzha Ashtamoorthy
Arunkumar Kavidapadinjattathil Sivadasan
Bente Klitgaard
William F. Laurance
Maurício Lima Dan
William E. Magnusson
Eduardo Malta Campos-Filho
Rubens Manoel dos Santos
Angelo Gilberto Manzatto
Marcos Silveira
Ben Hur Marimon-Junior
Roberta E. Martin
Daniel Luis Mascia Vieira
Thiago Metzker
William Milliken
Peter Moonlight
Marina Maria Moraes de Seixas
Paulo S. Morandi
Robert Muscarella
María Guadalupe Nava-Miranda
Brigitte Nyirambangutse
Jhonathan Oliveira Silva
Imma Oliveras Menor
Pablo José Francisco Pena Rodrigues
Cinthia Pereira de Oliveira
Lucas Pereira Zanzini
Carlos A. Peres
Vignesh Punjayil
Carlos A. Quesada
Maxime Réjou-Méchain
Terhi Riutta
Gonzalo Rivas-Torres
Clarissa Rosa
Norma Salinas
Rodrigo Scarton Bergamin
Beatriz Schwantes Marimon
Alexander Shenkin
Priscyla Maria Silva Rodrigues
Axa Emanuelle Simões Figueiredo
Queila Souza Garcia
Tereza Spósito
Danielle Storck-Tonon
Martin J. P. Sullivan
Martin Svátek
Wagner Tadeu Vieira Santiago
Yit Arn Teh
Prasad Theruvil Parambil Sivan
Marcelo Trindade Nascimento
Elmar Veenendaal
Irié Casimir Zo-Bi
Marie Ruth Dago
Soulemane Traoré
Marco Patacca
Vincyane Badouard
Samuel de Padua Chaves e Carvalho
Lee J. T. White
Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng
Etienne Zibera
Joeri Alexander Zwerts
David F. R. P. Burslem
Miles Silman
Jérôme Chave
Brian J. Enquist
Jos Barlow
Oliver L. Phillips
David A. Coomes
Yadvinder Malhi