Abstract
Warming and drought pose a serious threat to tropical forest. Yet the extent of this threat is uncertain, given the lack of methods to evaluate the forest tree cover changes under future climate predicted by complex dynamic vegetation models. Here we develop an empirical approach based on the observed climate space of tropical trees to estimate the maximum potential tropical tree cover (MPTC) in equilibrium with a given climate. We show that compared to present-day (2000–2009) conditions, MPTC will be reduced by 1 to 15% in the tropical band under equilibrium future (2090–2099) climate conditions predicted by 19 IPCC climate models. Tropical forests are found to regress or disappear mainly in the current transition zones between forest and savanna ecosystems. This climate pressure on tropical forests, added to human-caused land use pressure, poses a grand challenge to the sustainability of the world's largest biomass carbon pool.
Highlights
Warming and drought pose a serious threat to tropical forest
We show that compared to present-day (2000–2009) conditions, maximum potential tropical tree cover (MPTC) will be reduced by 1 to 15% in the tropical band under equilibrium future (2090–2099) climate conditions predicted by 19 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate models
Under the condition that trees do not exist where annual rainfall is inferior to evapotranspiration, we estimated the equilibrium MPTC in a (T, P) space discretized in 0.1uC temperature and 10 mm precipitation bins, using gridded fields of T, P and evapotranspiration from satellite observations
Summary
The extent of this threat is uncertain, given the lack of methods to evaluate the forest tree cover changes under future climate predicted by complex dynamic vegetation models. The climate maximum potential tree coverage (MPTC) it can support is determined by P and parameters (a 1 b) and b estimated from Equation (1) (see Methods). This is called potential fraction, because other non-climate factors or indirect climate factors, such as terrain slope, soil fertility, herbivores, disturbance, may further reduce or enhance tree cover[11], and because human-caused deforestation and degradation will yield to future forest loss beyond climate effects. We consider instant equilibrium of vegetation response to climate conditions, independent of the pathway and time required for vegetation to reach equilibrium under altered climates[13]
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