Drought sensitivity of the amazon rainforest

Oliver L. Phillips (Lead / Corresponding author), Luiz E. O. C. Aragão, Simon L. Lewis, Joshua B. Fisher, Jon Lloyd, Gabriela López-González, Yadvinder Malhi, Abel Monteagudo, Julie Peacock, Carlos A. Quesada, Geertjer Van Der Heijden, Samuel Almeida, Iêda Amaral, Luzmila Arroyo, Gerardo Aymard, Tim R. Baker, Olaf Bánki, Lilian Blanc, Damien Bonal, Paulo BrandoJerome Chave, Átila Cristina Alves de Oliveira, Nallaret Dávila Cardozo, Claudia I. Czimczik, Ted R. Feldpausch, Maria Aparecida Freitas, Emanuel Gloor, Niro Higuchi, Eliana Jiménez, Gareth Lloyd, Patrick Meir, Casimiro Mendoza, Alexandra Morel, David A. Neill, Daniel Nepstad, Sandra Patiño, Maria Cristina Peñuela, Adriana Prieto, Fredy Ramírez, Michael Schwarz, Javier Silva, Marcos Silveira, Anne Sota Thomas, Hans ter Steege, Juliana Stropp, Rodolfo Vásquez, Przemyslaw Zelazowski, Esteban Alvarez Dávila, Sandy Andelman, Ana Andrade, Kuo Jung Chao, Terry Erwin, Anthony Di Fiore, Eurídice Honorio C., Helen Keeling, Tim J. Killeen, William F. Laurance, Antonio Peña Cruz, Nigel C. A. Pitman, Percy Núñez Vargas, Hirma Ramírez-Angulo, Agustín Rudas, Rafael Salamão, Natalino Silva, John Terborgh, Armando Torres-Lezama

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    1411 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Amazon forests are a key but poorly understood component of the global carbon cycle. If, as anticipated, they dry this century, they might accelerate climate change through carbon losses and changed surface energy balances. We used records from multiple long-term monitoring plots across Amazonia to assess forest responses to the intense 2005 drought, a possible analog of future events. Affected forest lost biomass, reversing a large long-term carbon sink, with the greatest impacts observed where the dry season was unusually intense. Relative to pre-2005 conditions, forest subjected to a 100-millimeter increase in water deficit lost 5.3 megagrams of aboveground biomass of carbon per hectare. The drought had a total biomass carbon impact of 1.2 to 1.6 petagrams (1.2 × 1015 to 1.6 × 1015 grams). Amazon forests therefore appear vulnerable to increasing moisture stress, with the potential for large carbon losses to exert feedback on climate change.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1344-1347
    Number of pages4
    JournalScience
    Volume323
    Issue number5919
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 6 Mar 2009

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Drought sensitivity of the amazon rainforest'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this