Assessing the vulnerability of Brazilian savannas to drought-fire interactions: implications for carbon storage, ecosystem functioning and restoration success
Climate change could accelerate the intensity and frequency of natural and anthropogenic disturbances in tropical savanna ecosystems, promoting mortality of herbaceous and woody plants, interfering with community composition, and altering ecological processes and ecosystem functioning. Identifying species compositions based on their functional traits that confer greater resilience to new disturbance regimes and climatic conditions is crucial for guiding the preservation of intact ecosystems and the success of restoration efforts in the future. PI: Leandro Maracahipes; Support: Instituto Serrapilheira
|
Legacies of deforestation and forest degradation in the Amazonian agricultural frontier: impacts on biodiversity, the carbon cycle and water resources (PELD-Tang)
Land-use change has fundamentally altered the dynamics, functioning and structure of semideciduous seasonal forests in the Amazon-Cerrado ecotone. These changes, in turn, influence the local/regional climate through disruptions in the hydrological cycle, carbon and energy, with important implications for regional biodiversity and the integrity of the region's streams. These effects could persist for decades and interact with changes in the global climate. However, the possible trajectories of forests and aquatic environments remain poorly understood on the Amazon agricultural frontier, as well as their impacts on biodiversity and the associated ecosystem services/functioning. PI: Paulo Brando; Support: CNPq/Brazil.
|
Living on the edge: plant-animal interactions and the cascading impacts of Amazon forest fragmentation
The future of the world’s largest tropical forest depends on complex interactions between tree functional diversity and multiple natural disturbances, human-induced changes to disturbance regimes, and the resistance and resilience of forest ecosystems to changes in both abiotic conditions and plant-animal interactions. In Amazonia, droughts, heat waves, and windthrow events are natural disturbances that affect the dynamics of tropical forests by killing trees, altering competition, and influencing regeneration patterns. It is fundamental to assess mechanisms associated with forest resistance and resilience, from the individual to the community level, including physiological acclimation, phenotypic plasticity, environmental filtering of tree species and functional turnover, and animals' roles in facilitating forest regeneration. PI: Paulo Brando; Support: NSF/FAPESP.
|