Canopy functional trait variation across Earth’s tropical forests

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • Author collaboration for "Canopy functional trait variation across Earth’s tropical forests"
  • Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez
  • Sami W. Rifai
  • Xiongjie Deng
  • Hans ter Steege
  • Eleanor Thomson
  • Jose Javier Corral-Rivas
  • Joice Klipel

Tropical forest canopies are the biosphere’s most concentrated atmospheric interface for carbon, water and energy1,2. However, in most Earth System Models, the diverse and heterogeneous tropical forest biome is represented as a largely uniform ecosystem with either a singular or a small number of fixed canopy ecophysiological properties3. This situation arises, in part, from a lack of understanding about how and why the functional properties of tropical forest canopies vary geographically4. Here, by combining field-collected data from more than 1,800 vegetation plots and tree traits with satellite remote-sensing, terrain, climate and soil data, we predict variation across 13 morphological, structural and chemical functional traits of trees, and use this to compute and map the functional diversity of tropical forests. Our findings reveal that the tropical Americas, Africa and Asia tend to occupy different portions of the total functional trait space available across tropical forests. Tropical American forests are predicted to have 40% greater functional richness than tropical African and Asian forests. Meanwhile, African forests have the highest functional divergence—32% and 7% higher than that of tropical American and Asian forests, respectively. An uncertainty analysis highlights priority regions for further data collection, which would refine and improve these maps. Our predictions represent a ground-based and remotely enabled global analysis of how and why the functional traits of tropical forest canopies vary across space.

Original languageEnglish
Article number16024
JournalNature
Volume641
Issue number8061
Pages (from-to)129-136
Number of pages8
ISSN0028-0836
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.05.2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2025.

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Blättern, wenden, wiegen, zahlen
  2. Interactive priming effect of labile carbon and crop residues on SOM depends on residue decomposition stage
  3. Locus of control
  4. Generation of 3D representative volume elements for heterogeneous materials
  5. Inherent and induced anisotropic finite visco-plasticity with applications to the forming of DC06 sheets
  6. Identity without Membership?
  7. The Bali Convention: flexibility of targets and instruments inevitable
  8. Predator assemblage structure and temporal variability of species richness and abundance in forests of high tree diversity
  9. Moving Around Myanmar
  10. Time matters
  11. y-Randomization and its variants in QSPR/QSAR
  12. New validated liquid chromatographic and chemometrics-assisted UV spectroscopic methods for the determination of two multicomponent cough mixtures in syrup.
  13. Modeling Self-Organization
  14. The dependency of the banks’ assets and liabilities
  15. Payments for ecosystem services – for efficiency and for equity?
  16. R. Michael Allen, Justification and the Gospel: Understanding the Contexts and the Controversies
  17. The Limits of Change
  18. What is a Digital Object?
  19. Mythos "Stunde Null"
  20. Reconstructing Diversity Management and Communication from a Constitutive-Polyphonic Perspective
  21. Groundwater intrusion into leaky sewer systems
  22. Understanding role models for change
  23. Das Inverted Classroom Model (ICM) im Kontext kompetenzorientierter Hochschullehre
  24. A duty-block network approach for an integrated driver rostering problem in public bus transport
  25. Neighbourhood interactions drive overyielding in mixed-species tree communities
  26. Computer-Kriegs-Spiele oder: eine Kultur der Gewalt
  27. Georeferencing System for Maneuvering of Autonomous Truck in Mining Environment
  28. A new didactic approach in Engineering Education for conceptual understanding of Euler's Formula
  29. Datenschutzbedenken in Sozialen Netzen -
  30. Global Tax Governance: What is Wrong With It and How to Fix It by Peter Dietsch and Thomas Rixen (eds). Colchester: ECPR Press, 2016
  31. Good-Practice-Sammlung