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Implications of size-dependent tree mortality for tropical forest carbon dynamics

Abstract

Tropical forests are mitigating the ongoing climate crisis by absorbing more atmospheric carbon than they emit. However, widespread increases in tree mortality rates are decreasing the ability of tropical forests to assimilate and store carbon. A relatively small number of large trees dominate the contributions of these forests to the global carbon budget, yet we know remarkably little about how these large trees die. Here, we propose a cohesive and empirically informed framework for understanding and investigating size-dependent drivers of tree mortality. This theory-based framework enables us to posit that abiotic drivers of tree mortality—particularly drought, wind and lightning—regulate tropical forest carbon cycling via their disproportionate effects on large trees. As global change is predicted to increase the pressure from abiotic drivers, the associated deaths of large trees could rapidly and lastingly reduce tropical forest biomass stocks. Focused investigations of large tree death are needed to understand how shifting drivers of mortality are restructuring carbon cycling in tropical forests.

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Fig. 1: Size-dependent contributions of mortality to carbon losses.
Fig. 2: Hypothesized trends of size-dependent tree mortality.
Fig. 3: Hypothetical consequences of increases in major drivers.

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Acknowledgements

We thank H. Muller-Landau and her laboratory, and S. Schnitzer, S. Davies, W. Baker, C. Signori Müller, E. Luna-Diez and E. Leigh for their comments. This project was instigated by an organized oral session at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in 2019. E.M.G. was funded by the Earl S. Tupper Fellowship and NSF grant DEB-1655346. A.E.-M. was funded by the ERC award TreeMort 758873. A.E.-M. thanks the GEES women writing sessions during which part of the manuscript was written. This is paper number 49 of the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research.

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Both authors conceived the study, reviewed and interpreted the literature, analysed the data, wrote the manuscript and approved the final version.

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Correspondence to Evan M. Gora or Adriane Esquivel-Muelbert.

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Gora, E.M., Esquivel-Muelbert, A. Implications of size-dependent tree mortality for tropical forest carbon dynamics. Nat. Plants 7, 384–391 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-021-00879-0

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