Tropical dry forest resilience and water use efficiency: an analysis of productivity under climate change

Kayla D Stan,Sebastian Doetterl,Kati Laakso,Michael Hesketh,J Antonio Guzman Q,Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa,Cassidy Rankine,Sandra M Duran,Carlos Portillo-Quintero

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f3

Kayla D Stan, Sebastian Doetterl + Show 7 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abf6f3

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Abstract

Tropical dry forests (TDFs) worldwide have an environment-sensitive phenological signal, which easily marks their response to the changing climatic conditions, especially precipitation and temperature. Using TDF phenological characteristics as a proxy, this study aims to evaluate their current continental response to climate change across the Americas. Here, we show that TDFs are resilient to water stress and droughts by increasing their rain use efficiency (RUE) in drier years and recovering to average RUE in the year following the drought. Additionally, we find that TDF productivity trends over the past 18 years are spatially clustered, with sites in the northern hemisphere experiencing increased productivity, while equatorial regions have no change, and the southern hemisphere exhibiting decreased productivity. The results indicate that the TDF will be resilient under future climatic conditions, particularly if there are increasing drought conditions.

Highlights

The productivity of a given forest is inherently linked with biomass accrual and can be measured using leaf growth or woody mass (Skovsgaard and Vanclay 2008, Reich 2012)
Relationship between climate variables and productivity To assess the relationship between productivity and climate variables, we first tested the reliability of the integrated EVI (iEVI) from moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) against in situ litterfall data
When there are severe droughts, Tropical dry forests (TDFs) require more than two years to return to pre-event conditions, and the efficiency is higher in the year following the drought, indicating a higher level of stress

Summary

Introduction

The productivity of a given forest is inherently linked with biomass accrual and can be measured using leaf growth or woody mass (Skovsgaard and Vanclay 2008, Reich 2012) In both cases, this measure of biomass is linked to the ability of the forest to sequester carbon, a fundamental ecosystem service, as well as to the ecosystem resilience, thereby indicating forest health (Albrecht and Kandji 2003, Spasojevic et al 2016). The mechanisms of resilience are typically assessed in the a pre and post disturbance return time (Bhaskar et al 2018) It has been found by recent research that species diversity with different response strategies increases the resilience of an ecosystem (Alvarez-Yepiz et al 2018, Bhaskar et al 2018). Other research finds that this are tradeoffs between being resistant to distubances and increasing the resilience, with a particular trade-offs between wood density and resprouting (Paz et al 2018)

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