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Higher resilience to climatic disturbances in tropical vegetation exposed to more variable rainfall

Nature Geoscience volume 12, pages 174–179 (2019)Cite this article

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abstract

With ongoing global warming, the amount and frequency of precipitation in the tropics is projected to change substantially. While it has been shown that tropical forests and savannahs are sustained within the same intermediate mean annual precipitation range, the mechanisms that lead to the resilience of these ecosystems are still not fully understood. In particular, the long-term impact of rainfall variability on resilience is as yet unclear. Here we present observational evidence that both tropical forest and savannah exposed to a higher rainfall variability—in particular on interannual scales—during their long-term past are overall more resilient against climatic disturbances. Based on precipitation and tree cover data in the Brazilian Amazon basin, we constructed potential landscapes that enable us to systematically measure the resilience of the different ecosystems. Additionally, we infer that shifts from forest to savannah due to decreasing precipitation in the future are more likely to occur in regions with a precursory lower rainfall variability. Long-term rainfall variability thus needs to be taken into account in resilience analyses and projections of vegetation response to climate change.

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Fig. 1: Bistable regions of rainforest and savannah.
Fig. 2: Potential of tree cover fractions for different precipitation regimes.
Fig. 3: Resilience of savannah and rainforest for different precipitation regimes.
Fig. 4: Potential shifts of vegetation states under future climate change.

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Code availability

The computer code used for this study is available on request.

Data availability

The data reported in this paper are extracted from the publicly available sites of MODIS (https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/)52, IBGE (https://www.ibge.gov.br/)45 and CRU (https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/)19.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Lange for providing the global climate model data. We thank E. H. van Nes for the helpful introduction in computing potential landscapes. This paper was developed within the scope of the IRTG 1740/TRP 2015/50122-0, funded by the DFG/FAPESP. C.C. acknowledges the project grant BMBF 01LN1306A. M.H. and R.S.O. acknowledge the project grants Microsoft/FAPESP 2013/50169–1 and 2011/52072-0, as well as Instituto Serrapilheira/Serra-1709–18983. N.B. acknowledges funding by the German Science Foundation (DFG, Reference BO 4455/1–1). R.W. is thankful for support by the Leibniz Association (project DominoES).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany

    Catrin Ciemer, Niklas Boers, Jürgen Kurths, Finn Müller-Hansen & Ricarda Winkelmann

  2. Department of Physics, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

    Catrin Ciemer, Jürgen Kurths & Finn Müller-Hansen

  3. Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Niklas Boers

  4. Department of Physics, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil

    Marina Hirota

  5. Institute of Biology, University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil

    Marina Hirota & Rafael S. Oliveira

  6. Saratov State University, Saratov, Russia

    Jürgen Kurths

  7. Physics Institute, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Ricarda Winkelmann

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Contributions

C.C., N.B., M.H. and R.W. conceived the study and prepared the manuscript with contributions from R.S.O. C.C. performed the analyses. All the authors discussed the results and contributed to editing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Catrin Ciemer or Ricarda Winkelmann.

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Ciemer, C., Boers, N., Hirota, M. et al. Higher resilience to climatic disturbances in tropical vegetation exposed to more variable rainfall. Nat. Geosci. 12, 174–179 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0312-z

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