Climate drivers of the Amazon forest greening

Author(s)

Wagner, Fabien Hubert ; Herault, Bruno ; Rossi, Vivien ; Hilker, Thomas ; Maeda, Eduardo Eiji ; Sanchez, Alber ; Lyapustin, Alexei I. ; Galvao, Lenio Soares ; Wang, Yujie ; Aragao, Luiz E. O. C.

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: PLoS One; v. 12, n. 7 JUL 14 2017.
• Web of Science Citations: 25

Abstract

Our limited understanding of the climate controls on tropical forest seasonality is one of the biggest sources of uncertainty in modeling climate change impacts on terrestrial ecosystems. Combining leaf production, litterfall and climate observations from satellite and ground data in the Amazon forest, we show that seasonal variation in leaf production is largely triggered by climate signals, specifically, insolation increase (70.4% of the total area) and precipitation increase (29.6%). Increase of insolation drives leaf growth in the absence of water limitation. For these non-water-limited forests, the simultaneous leaf flush occurs in a sufficient proportion of the trees to be observed from space. While tropical cycles are generally defined in terms of dry or wet season, we show that for a large part of Amazonia the increase in insolation triggers the visible progress of leaf growth, just like during spring in temperate forests. The dependence of leaf growth initiation on climate seasonality may result in a higher sensitivity of these ecosystems to changes in climate than previously thought. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 16/17652-9 - Functional diversity of intact and regenerating Amazon, Atlantic Forest and Cerrado systems using hyperspectral imagery
• Grantee: Fabien Hubert Wagner
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Young Researchers
• FAPESP's process: 16/03397-7 - Tools for satellite images management in array databases
• Grantee: Alber Hamersson Sánchez Ipia
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Technical Training Program - Technical Training
• FAPESP's process: 13/14520-6 - Quantifying and modelling the seasonality of pantropical forest net primary production using field observations and remote sensing data
• Grantee: Fabien Hubert Wagner
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• FAPESP's process: 15/50484-0 - Functional diversity of intact and regenerating Amazon, Atlantic Forest, and Cerrado systems using hyperspectral imagery
• Grantee: Fabien Hubert Wagner
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Young Investigators Grants