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  • Correspondence
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Ever-wet tropical forests as biodiversity refuges

Nature Climate Change volume 4, pages 740–741 (2014)Cite this article

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To the Editor —

The footprint of ever-wet zones is projected to largely contract throughout the tropics rather than expand or shift to new areas, attributable in our analysis to increasing seasonal variability in rainfall rather than pronounced decreases in areas that receive high (≥2,000 mm) annual precipitation. Extensive areas of the central Amazon Basin and the Guianas, however, will no longer qualify as ever-wet zones due to both longer dry spells and less annual rainfall (Supplementary Fig. S2). The projected loss of ever-wet zones in these two regions dominate global losses, with a marked trend of contraction westward, resulting in an estimated loss of one-third of the Neotropical ever-wet zone (Supplementary Table S1). Substantial contraction also occurs in northern Central America, the southwest Amazon Basin, eastern Sulawesi, and eastern Madagascar. The few ever-wet zones in the rest of the Afrotropics remain largely unaltered in extent under future climates, a pattern shared with the extensive ever-wet zones of the archipelagic Indo-Malay and Australasia realms (Supplementary Fig. S2). Overall drying in these three realms is expected to be less pronounced than in the Neotropics4. Although climate change models project that certain tropical regions may receive more annual precipitation3, our analysis suggests that a shift towards increasing dry months may preclude ever-wet zones of any substantial size beyond their current footprint.

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Figure 1: Ever-wet zones within the tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forest (TSMBF) biome6 defined using current climate and future climates3,7 in 2050 under representative concentration pathway 8.5 (where ≥75% of 17 global climate models agree).

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. Brooks and V. Russell for reviewing an earlier version of this Correspondence; R. Boynton, M. Tobias, and D. Waetjen at the Information Center for the Environment at UC Davis for technical support; and R. Hijmans at UC Davis for developing the compilation of downscaled climate data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, 95616, California, USA

    Emma C. Underwood, Allan D. Hollander & James F. Quinn

  2. Conservation Earth Consulting,

    David Olson

Authors
  1. Emma C. Underwood
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  2. David Olson
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  3. Allan D. Hollander
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Contributions

E.C.U and D.O. conceived and designed the study and wrote the Correspondence. A.D.H. and E.C.U. analysed the data and J.F.Q. contributed materials and conceptual advice.

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Correspondence to Emma C. Underwood.

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Underwood, E., Olson, D., Hollander, A. et al. Ever-wet tropical forests as biodiversity refuges. Nature Clim Change 4, 740–741 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2351

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