Reduced ecosystem resilience quantifies fine-scale heterogeneity in tropical forest mortality responses to drought
Abstract
Sensitivity of forest mortality to drought in carbon-dense tropical forests remains fraught with uncertainty, while extreme droughts are predicted to be more frequent and intense. Here, in this study, the potential of temporal autocorrelation of high-frequency variability in Landsat Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), an indicator of ecosystem resilience, to predict spatial and temporal variations of forest biomass mortality is evaluated against in situ census observations for 64 site-year combinations in Costa Rican tropical dry forests during the 2015 ENSO drought. Temporal autocorrelation, within the optimal moving window of 24 months, demonstrated robust predictive power for in situ mortality (leave-one- out cross-validation R2 = 0.54), which allows for estimates of annual biomass mortality patterns at 30 m resolution. Subsequent spatial analysis showed substantial fine-scale heterogeneity of forest mortality patterns, largely driven by drought intensity and ecosystem properties related to plant water use such as forest deciduousness and topography. Highly deciduous forest patches demonstrated much lower mortality sensitivity to drought stress than less deciduous forest patches after elevation was controlled. Our results highlight the potential of high-resolution remote sensing to “fingerprint” forest mortality and the significant role of ecosystem heterogeneity in forest biomass resistance to drought.
- Authors:
-
[1];
[2];
[2];
[3];
[5];
[1]
- Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (United States)
- Univ. of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN (United States)
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States). Atmospheric Science and Global Change Div. (ASGC); Washington State Univ., Pullman, WA (United States)
- Colby College, Waterville, ME (United States)
- Univ. of Notre Dame, IN (United States)
- The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States)
- Duke Univ., Durham, NC (United States)
- Costa Rica Institute of Technology (Costa Rica)
- Univ. of Alberta, Edmonton, AB (Canada)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE; National Science Foundation (NSF); National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1890938
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-169613
Journal ID: ISSN 1354-1013
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830; SC0014363; DEB-1053237
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Global Change Biology
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 28; Journal Issue: 6; Journal ID: ISSN 1354-1013
- Publisher:
- Wiley
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES; ecosystem resilience; EVI; extreme drought; forest mortality; remote sensing; spatial heterogeneity; tropical dry forests; vegetation index
Citation Formats
Wu, Donghai, Vargas G., German, Powers, Jennifer S., McDowell, Nate G., Becknell, Justin M., Pérez‐Aviles, Daniel, Medvigy, David, Liu, Yanlan, Katul, Gabriel G., Calvo‐Alvarado, Julio César, Calvo‐Obando, Ana, Sanchez‐Azofeifa, Arturo, and Xu, Xiangtao. Reduced ecosystem resilience quantifies fine-scale heterogeneity in tropical forest mortality responses to drought. United States: N. p., 2021.
Web. doi:10.1111/gcb.16046.
Wu, Donghai, Vargas G., German, Powers, Jennifer S., McDowell, Nate G., Becknell, Justin M., Pérez‐Aviles, Daniel, Medvigy, David, Liu, Yanlan, Katul, Gabriel G., Calvo‐Alvarado, Julio César, Calvo‐Obando, Ana, Sanchez‐Azofeifa, Arturo, & Xu, Xiangtao. Reduced ecosystem resilience quantifies fine-scale heterogeneity in tropical forest mortality responses to drought. United States. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16046
Wu, Donghai, Vargas G., German, Powers, Jennifer S., McDowell, Nate G., Becknell, Justin M., Pérez‐Aviles, Daniel, Medvigy, David, Liu, Yanlan, Katul, Gabriel G., Calvo‐Alvarado, Julio César, Calvo‐Obando, Ana, Sanchez‐Azofeifa, Arturo, and Xu, Xiangtao. Fri .
"Reduced ecosystem resilience quantifies fine-scale heterogeneity in tropical forest mortality responses to drought". United States. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16046. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1890938.
@article{osti_1890938,
title = {Reduced ecosystem resilience quantifies fine-scale heterogeneity in tropical forest mortality responses to drought},
author = {Wu, Donghai and Vargas G., German and Powers, Jennifer S. and McDowell, Nate G. and Becknell, Justin M. and Pérez‐Aviles, Daniel and Medvigy, David and Liu, Yanlan and Katul, Gabriel G. and Calvo‐Alvarado, Julio César and Calvo‐Obando, Ana and Sanchez‐Azofeifa, Arturo and Xu, Xiangtao},
abstractNote = {Sensitivity of forest mortality to drought in carbon-dense tropical forests remains fraught with uncertainty, while extreme droughts are predicted to be more frequent and intense. Here, in this study, the potential of temporal autocorrelation of high-frequency variability in Landsat Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), an indicator of ecosystem resilience, to predict spatial and temporal variations of forest biomass mortality is evaluated against in situ census observations for 64 site-year combinations in Costa Rican tropical dry forests during the 2015 ENSO drought. Temporal autocorrelation, within the optimal moving window of 24 months, demonstrated robust predictive power for in situ mortality (leave-one- out cross-validation R2 = 0.54), which allows for estimates of annual biomass mortality patterns at 30 m resolution. Subsequent spatial analysis showed substantial fine-scale heterogeneity of forest mortality patterns, largely driven by drought intensity and ecosystem properties related to plant water use such as forest deciduousness and topography. Highly deciduous forest patches demonstrated much lower mortality sensitivity to drought stress than less deciduous forest patches after elevation was controlled. Our results highlight the potential of high-resolution remote sensing to “fingerprint” forest mortality and the significant role of ecosystem heterogeneity in forest biomass resistance to drought.},
doi = {10.1111/gcb.16046},
journal = {Global Change Biology},
number = 6,
volume = 28,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Dec 17 00:00:00 EST 2021},
month = {Fri Dec 17 00:00:00 EST 2021}
}
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