Left high and dry: a call to action for increased hydrological research in tropical dry forests

Abstract

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Introduction Tropical dry forests have lived in the shadow of their humid counterparts with respect to scientific research. Despite accounting for more than 42% of all tropical forest (Murphy and Lugo, 1995) and roughly 6% of the Earth’s land surface, less than 15% of the literature on all tropical forest research has focused on tropical dry forests with the remainder highlighting work in tropical wet forests (Sanchez-Azofeifa et al., 2005; Santos et al., 2011). Many of these tropical dry forest regions are currently water stressed, and additional pressures from population growth, land use and future climate change will have significant implications for the future functioning of their natural and socioeconomic systems. In spite of the recognized importance ofwater resources in the tropics, there have been remarkably few publications on the hydrological processes in this region as compared to the humid temperate zone (e.g. Bonell, 1993, 1998; Buttle et al., 2009;Ohte andTokuchi, 2011; Price, 2011). This is especially true for tropical dry forests, which is surprising given that surface runoff is often limited to a 3 – 5month period annually, with an intervening dry period with little to no precipitation (Ortiz-Jimenez et al., 2005; Love et al., 2010). Hence, there is a critical need to understand the hydrology of tropical dry forests, particularly in light of current land use and future climate change issues facing these regions. In this, commentary we will highlight the: