A quarter of the deforested Amazon has regrown as secondary tropical forest and yet the climatic importance of these complex regenerating landscapes is only beginning to be recognised. Advances in satellite remote-sensing have transformed our ability to detect and...
Tropical forests harbor a significant portion of global biodiversity and are a critical component of the climate system. Reducing deforestation and forest degradation contributes to global climate-change mitigation efforts, yet emissions and removals from forest...
Deforestation and fragmentation influence the microclimate, vegetation structure, and composition of remaining patches of tropical forest. In the southern Amazon, at the frontier of cropland expansion, forests are converted and fragmented in a pattern that leaves...
Changes in weather and land use are transforming the spatial and temporal characteristics of fire regimes in Amazonia, with important effects on the functioning of dense (i.e., closed‐canopy), open‐canopy, and transitional forests across the Basin.
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.
Humans rely on healthy forests to supply energy, building materials, and food and to provide services such as storing carbon, hosting biodiversity, and regulating climate. Defining forest health integrates utilitarian and ecosystem measures of forest condition and...
Study region: Upper Xingu River Basin, southeastern Amazonia. Study focus: This study assessed the influence of land cover changes on evapotranspiration and streamflow in small catchments in the Upper Xingu River Basin (Mato Grosso state, Brazil). Streamflow was...