TY - JOUR
T1 - Size and frequency of natural forest disturbances and the Amazon forest carbon balance
AU - Espírito-Santo, Fernando D.B.
AU - Gloor, Manuel
AU - Keller, Michael
AU - Malhi, Yadvinder
AU - Saatchi, Sassan
AU - Nelson, Bruce
AU - Junior, Raimundo C.Oliveira
AU - Pereira, Cleuton
AU - Lloyd, Jon
AU - Frolking, Steve
AU - Palace, Michael
AU - Shimabukuro, Yosio E.
AU - Duarte, Valdete
AU - Mendoza, Abel Monteagudo
AU - López-González, Gabriela
AU - Baker, Tim R.
AU - Feldpausch, Ted R.
AU - Brienen, Roel J.W.
AU - Asner, Gregory P.
AU - Boyd, Doreen S.
AU - Phillips, Oliver L.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the NASA Earth System Science Fellowship (NESSF) Grant no. NNX07AN84N (F.D.B.E.-S. and M.K.), the NASA Terrestrial Ecology Program contribution to the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in the Amazon (LBA), CalTech Postdoctoral Fellowship at JPL (F.D.B.E.-S.), NERC consortia projects, AMAZONICA (NE/F005806/1, TROBIT) for support of RAINFOR and M.G., R.J.W.B., O.L.P., T.R.F., G.L-G., J.L. and Y.M., and two grants from the European Research Council (T-FORCES, O.L.P.; GEOCARBON, M.G., O.L.P. and Y.M.L.). We thank the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology for its support of the LBA program and the National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA) for implementation of this program. Development of the RAINFOR network including measurement of biomass dynamics has been supported by 34 different grants, especially the Moore Foundation. We thank the authorities in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru and Venezuela, and colleagues across the region for support. We are grateful to Dr Jeff Chambers who brought several of us together in an excellent meeting in 2006 at Tulane University where the idea for quantifying the disturbance spectrum was born. The Carnegie Airborne Observatory is made possible by Moore Foundation, the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Avatar Alliance Foundation, the W.M. Keck Foundation, the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation, Mary Anne Nyburg Baker and G. Leonard Baker Jr, and William R. Hearst III.
PY - 2014/3/18
Y1 - 2014/3/18
N2 - Forest inventory studies in the Amazon indicate a large terrestrial carbon sink. However, field plots may fail to represent forest mortality processes at landscape-scales of tropical forests. Here we characterize the frequency distribution of disturbance events in natural forests from 0.01 ha to 2,651 ha size throughout Amazonia using a novel combination of forest inventory, airborne lidar and satellite remote sensing data. We find that small-scale mortality events are responsible for aboveground biomass losses of ~1.7 Pg C y -1 over the entire Amazon region. We also find that intermediate-scale disturbances account for losses of ~0.2 Pg C y-1, and that the largest-scale disturbances as a result of blow-downs only account for losses of ~0.004 Pg C y-1. Simulation of growth and mortality indicates that even when all carbon losses from intermediate and large-scale disturbances are considered, these are outweighed by the net biomass accumulation by tree growth, supporting the inference of an Amazon carbon sink.
AB - Forest inventory studies in the Amazon indicate a large terrestrial carbon sink. However, field plots may fail to represent forest mortality processes at landscape-scales of tropical forests. Here we characterize the frequency distribution of disturbance events in natural forests from 0.01 ha to 2,651 ha size throughout Amazonia using a novel combination of forest inventory, airborne lidar and satellite remote sensing data. We find that small-scale mortality events are responsible for aboveground biomass losses of ~1.7 Pg C y -1 over the entire Amazon region. We also find that intermediate-scale disturbances account for losses of ~0.2 Pg C y-1, and that the largest-scale disturbances as a result of blow-downs only account for losses of ~0.004 Pg C y-1. Simulation of growth and mortality indicates that even when all carbon losses from intermediate and large-scale disturbances are considered, these are outweighed by the net biomass accumulation by tree growth, supporting the inference of an Amazon carbon sink.
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U2 - 10.1038/ncomms4434
DO - 10.1038/ncomms4434
M3 - Article
C2 - 24643258
AN - SCOPUS:84897883441
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 5
JO - Nature communications
JF - Nature communications
M1 - 3434
ER -