Studies published in Nature deepen understanding of tropical forests

The journal Nature recently published two articles that deepen our knowledge of the characteristics of tropical forest trees in relation to their ecological interactions. The studies were carried out by an international network of more than 100 scientists from various institutions, including researchers Haroldo Lima, Domingos Cardoso, Mariana Iguatemy and Pablo Pena Rodrigues, from the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden.

Wood - In the article Variation of wood density in tropical forests of South America, relevant information was collected on the variation of wood density in South America. This analysis refined the east-west gradients of the Amazon, also revealing fine-scale variation and extending the predictions to the Andean, dry and Atlantic forests.

Wood density is an extremely important functional characteristic of trees as it is related to various ecological aspects of species and has recently been widely used to assess carbon stocks and forest biomass. In the context of climate change caused by human action, carbon sequestration by forests is fundamental and estimates of this potential still present technical and conceptual challenges. It is therefore important to understand how and why wood density varies, especially in tropical America, where forests have immense spatial variation and species diversity.

The findings published in Nature greatly reduce biomass prediction errors by taking into account spatial variation in wood density. According to the researchers, these findings will certainly help to improve remote sensing-based estimates of biomass carbon stocks in tropical South America.

Canopy - The functioning of forests is still a great mystery to science and understanding the functional characteristics of plants allows us to know how species interact with the environment and with other species. The study Variation of canopy functional characteristics in the Earth's tropical forests, carried out on a planetary scale, mapped the functional diversity of tropical forests and showed that the tropical forests of the Americas have a functional richness 40% higher than that of African and Asian tropical forests.

Understanding how the functional properties of these forests vary geographically was only possible using data obtained from more than 1,800 permanent vegetation monitoring plots. By combining tree characteristics with data from satellite remote sensing, terrain, climate and soil, the variation in 13 morphological, structural and chemical functional characteristics of trees was predicted and used to calculate and map the functional diversity of tropical forests. “This collaborative work is yet another crucial initiative for the conservation of tropical forests in the face of climate change and other anthropogenic transformations of the Biosphere,” say the authors.