Tractor-trailer truckslin e up along a red and muddy earthen road. Large vinyl tarpaulins secured by ropes cover the open-topped hoppers of each one. Truck drivers hang out and prepare simple meals using stoves and kitchen utensils contained in a compact box built into the side of the truck cab. It’s early March, still the middle of a lush and highly predictable rainy season. Th e trucks wait for their turn and then enter a large modern compound with a football fi eld–sized building where they are loaded with recently harvested and dried soybeans and weighed.
Threshold Responses to Soil Moisture Deficit by Trees and Soil in Tropical Rain Forests: Insights from Field Experiments
Threshold Responses to Soil Moisture Deficit by Trees and Soil in Tropical Rain Forests: Insights from Field Experiments
Many tropical rain forest regions are at risk of increased future drought. The net effects of drought on forest ecosystem functioning will be substantial if important ecological thresholds are passed. However, understanding and predicting these effects is challenging using observational studies alone. Field-based rainfall exclusion (canopy throughfall exclusion; TFE) experiments can offer mechanistic insight into the response to extended or severe drought and can be used to help improve model-based simulations, which are currently inadequate.