Deforestation and climate feedbacks threaten the ecological integrity of south-southeastern Amazonia

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Volumn 368, Issue 1619, 2013, Pages

  Coe, Michael T ^a   Marthews, Toby R ^b   Costa, Marcos Heil ^c   Galbraith, David R ^d   Greenglass, Nora L ^a   Imbuzeiro, Hewlley M A ^c   Levine, Naomi M ^e   Malhi, Yadvinder ^b   Moorcroft, Paul R ^e   Muza, Michel Nobre ^f   Powell, Thomas L ^e   Saleska, Scott R ^g   Solorzano, Luis A ^h   Wang, Jingfeng ⁱ  

^a WOODS HOLE RESEARCH CENTER   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

^c FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF VIÇOSA   (Brazil)

^d UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS   (United Kingdom)

^e HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^f Ciência e Tecnologia de Santa Catarina   (Brazil)

^g University of Arizona   (United States)

^h CGIAR Consortium Office   (France)

ⁱ Georgia Institute of Technology   (United States)

Author keywords

Amazon ecology; Climate feedbacks; Deforestation

Indexed keywords

CLIMATE CHANGE; CLIMATE FEEDBACK; CONSERVATION MANAGEMENT; DEFORESTATION; DROUGHT; GREENHOUSE GAS; INDEX OF BIOTIC INTEGRITY; POLICY APPROACH; PROTECTED AREA; SUSTAINABILITY; VULNERABILITY;

AMAZONIA;

CARBON DIOXIDE; RAIN;

BRAZIL; DROUGHT; ECOSYSTEM; ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING; ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION; FIRE; GREENHOUSE EFFECT; PROCEDURES; TREE; TROPIC CLIMATE;

BRAZIL; CARBON DIOXIDE; CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES; DROUGHTS; ECOSYSTEM; ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY; FIRES; GREENHOUSE EFFECT; RAIN; TREES; TROPICAL CLIMATE;

EID: 84876491549     PISSN: 09628436     EISSN: 14712970     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2012.0155     Document Type: Article

References (80)

1. Townshend JRG, Carroll M, Dimiceli C, Sohlberg R, Hansen M, DeFries R. 2011 Vegetation continuous fields MOD44B, 2010 percent tree cover, collection 5. College Park, MD: University of Maryland. See https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/get_data (accessed 5 January 2012).
2. Soares-Filho BS, et al. 2010 Role of the Brazilian Amazon protected areas in climate change mitigation. Proc Natl Acad. Sci. USA 107, 10 821-10 826. (doi:10.1073/pnas.0913048107)
3. Nepstad DC, Stickler CM, Soares-Filho B, Merry F. 2008 Interactions among Amazon land use, forests and climate: prospects for a near-term forest tipping point. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 363, 1737-1746. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2007.0036)
4. Pan Y, et al. 2011 A large and persistent carbon sink in the world's forests. Science 333, 988-993. (doi:10.1126/science.1201609)
5. FAO, ITTO. 2011 The state of forests in the Amazon Basin, Congo Basin and Southeast Asia. Brazzaville: Republic of Congo.
6. Malhi Y, Roberts JT, Betts RA, Killeen TJ, Li W, Nobre CA. 2008 Climate change, deforestation, and the fate of the Amazon. Science 319, 169-172. (doi:10. 1126/science.1146961)
7. Davidson EA, et al. 2012 The Amazon basin in transition. Nature 481, 321-328. (doi:10.1038/ nature10717)
8. Laurance WF, et al. 2012 Making conservation research more relevant for conservation practitioners. Biol. Conserv. 153, 164-168. (doi:10. 1016/j.biocon.2012.05.012)
9. Assunção J, Gandour CC, Rocha R. 2012 Deforestation slowdown in the legal Amazon: prices or policies? Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Climate Policy Initiative.
10. Lathuillière MJ, Mark S, Johnson MS, Donner SD. 2012 Water use by terrestrial ecosystems: temporal variability in rainforest and agricultural contributions to evapotranspiration in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Environ. Res. Lett. 7, 024024. (doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/2/ 024024)
11. Costa MH. 2005 Large-scale hydrological impacts of tropical forest conversion. In Forests, water and people in the humid tropics (eds M Bonell, LA Bruijnzeel), pp. 590-597. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
12. Costa MH, Yanagi SNM, Souza P, Ribeiro A, Rocha EJP. 2007 Climate change in Amazonia caused by soybean cropland expansion, as compared to caused by pastureland expansion. Geophys. Res. Lett. 34, L07706. (doi:10.1029/2007GL029271)
13. Berbet MLC, Costa MH. 2003 Climate change after tropical deforestation: seasonal variability of surface albedo and its effects on precipitation change. J. Climate 16, 2099-2104. (doi:10.1175/1520-0442(2003)016,2099:CCATDS.2.0.CO;2)
14. Nobre P, Malagutti M, Urbano DF, Almeida RAF, Giarolla E. 2009 Amazon deforestation and climate change in a coupled model simulation. J. Climate 22, 5686-5697. (doi:10.1175/ 2009JCLI2757.1)
15. Wang J, Bras RL, Eltahir EAB. 2000 The impact of observed deforestation on the mesoscale distribution of rainfall and clouds in Amazonia. J. Hydrometeorol. 1, 267-286. (doi:10.1175/1525-7541(2000)001,0267:TIOODO.2.0.CO;2)
16. Knox R, Bisht G, Wang J, Bras RL. 2011 Precipitation variability over the forest to non-forest transition in southwestern Amazonia. J. Climate 24, 2368-2377. (doi:10.1175/2010JCLI3815.1)
17. Saad SI, da Rocha HR, Silva Dias MAF, Rosolem R. 2010 Can the deforestation breeze change the rainfall in Amazonia? A case study for the BR-163 highway region. Earth Interact. 14, 1-25. (doi:10. 1175/2010EI351.1)
18. Butt N, Oliveira PA, Costa MH. 2011 Evidence that deforestation affects the onset of the rainy season in Rondonia, Brazil. J. Geophys. Res. 116, 8. (doi:10. 1029/2010JD015174)
19. Costa MH, Pires GF. 2009 Effecs of Amazon and Central Brazil deforestation scenarios on the duration of the dry season in the arc of deforestation. Int. J. Climatol. 30, 1970-1979. (doi:10.1002/joc.2048)
20. Spraklen DV, Arnold SR, Taylor CM. 2012 Observations of increased tropical rainfall preceded by air passage over forests. Nature 489, 282-285. (doi:10.1038/nature11390)
21. Marengo JA, Tomasella J, Alves LM, Soares WR, Rodriguez DA. 2011 The drought of 2010 in the context of historical droughts in the Amazon region. Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L12703. (doi:10.1029/ 2011GL047436)
22. Alencar A, Asner G, Knapp D, Zarin D. 2011 Temporal variability of forest fires in the eastern Amazon. Ecol. Appl. 21, 2397-2412. (doi:10.1890/ 10-1168.1)
23. Andreae MO, Rosenfeld D, Artaxo P, Costa AA, Frank GP, Longo KM, Silva-Dias MAF. 2004 Smoking rain clouds over the Amazon. Science 303, 1337-1342. (doi:10.1126/science.1092779)
24. Bevan SL, North PRJ, Grey WMF, Los SO, Plummer SE. 2009 Impact of atmospheric aerosol from biomass burning on Amazon dry-season drought. J. Geophys. Res. 114, D09204. (doi:10.1029/ 2008JD011112)
25. Soares-Filho BS, et al. 2006 Modelling conservation in the Amazon basin. Nature 440, 520-523. (doi:10.1038/nature04389)
26. Coe MT, Costa MH, Soares-Filho BS. 2009 The influence of historical and potential future deforestation on the stream flow of the Amazon River: land surface processes and atmospheric feedbacks. J. Hydrol. 369, 165-174. (doi:10.1016/j. jhydrol.2009.02.043)
27. Malhado ACM, Pires GF, Costa MH. 2010 Cerrado conservation is essential to protect the Amazon rainforest. AMBIO 39, 580-584. (doi:10.1007/ s13280-0100084-6)
28. Malhi Y, Aragao LEOC, Galbraith D, Huntingford C, Fisher R, Zelazowski P, Sitch S, McSweeney C, Meir P. 2009 Exploring the likelihood and mechanism of a climate-change-induced dieback of the Amazon rainforest. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA. 106, 20 610-20 615. (doi:10.1073/pnas.0804619106)
29. Zelazowski P, Malhi Y, Huntingford C, Sitch S, Fisher JB. 2011 Changes in the potential distribution of humid tropical forests on a warmer planet. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 369, 137-160. (doi:10.1098/rsta. 2010.0238)
30. Schnitzer SA, Bongers F. 2011 Increasing liana abundance and biomass in tropical forests: emerging patterns and putative mechanisms. Ecol. Lett. 14, 397-406. (doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01590.x)
31. Phillips OL, et al. 2002 Increasing dominance of large lianas in Amazonian forests. Nature 418, 770-774. (doi:10.1038/nature00926)
32. Phillips OL, et al. 2004 Pattern and process in Amazon tree turnover, 1976-2001. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 359, 381-407. (doi:10.1098/ rstb.2003.1438)
33. Phillips OL, et al. 2009 Drought sensitivity of the Amazon rainforest. Science 344, 1344-1347. (doi:10.1126/science.1164033)
34. Lewis SL, et al. 2009 Increasing carbon storage in intact African tropical forests. Nature 457, 1003-1006. (doi:10.1038/nature07771)
35. Fisher JI, Hurtt GC, Thomas RQ, Chambers JQ. 2008 Clustered disturbances lead to bias in large-scale estimates based on forest sample plots. Ecol. Lett. 11, 554-563. (doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2008. 01169.x)
36. da Costa ACL, et al. 2010 Effect of 7 yr of experimental drought on vegetation dynamics and biomass storage of an eastern Amazonian rainforest. New Phytol. 187, 579-591. (doi:10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03309.x)
37. Nepstad D, Tohlver I, Ray D, Moutinho P, Cardinot G. 2007 Long-term experimental drought effects on stem mortality, forest structure, and dead biomass pools in an eastern-central Amazonian forest. Ecology 88, 2259-2269. (doi:10.1890/06-1046.1)
38. Brando P, Nepstad D. 2008 Experimental drought-induced alterations of productivity and structure in an East-Central Amazonian forest. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 363, 1839-1848. (doi:10.1098/rstb. 2007.0031)
39. Vourlitis GL, da Rocha HR. 2011 Flux dynamics in the cerrado and cerrado-forest transition of Brazil. In Ecosystem function in global savannas: measurement and modeling at landscape to global scales (eds MJ Hill, NP Hanan), pp. 97-116. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
40. Lewis SL, Brando PM, Phillips OL, van der Heijden GMF, Nepstad DC. 2011 The 2010 Amazon drought. Science 331, 554. (doi:10.1126/science.1200807)
41. Xu L, Samanta A, Costa MH, Ganguly S, Nemani RR, Myneni RB. 2011 Widespread decline in greenness of Amazonian vegetation due to the 2010 drought. Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L07402. (doi:10.1029/ 2011GL046824)
42. Nunes EL, Costa MH, Malhado ACM, Dias LCP, Pinto LB, Ladle RJ. 2012 Monitoring carbon assimilation in South America's tropical forests: model specification and application to the Amazonian droughts of 2005 and 2010. Remote Sensing Environ. 117, 449-463. (doi:10.1016/j.rse. 2011.10.022)
43. Armenteras D, González TM, Retana J. 2013 Forest fragmentation and edge influence on fire occurrence and intensity under different management types in Amazon forests. Biol. Conserv. 159, 73-79. (doi:10. 1016/j.biocon.2012.10.026)
44. Cochrane MA, Barber CP. 2009 Climate change, human land use and future fires in the Amazon. Glob. Change Biol. 15, 601-612. (doi:10.1111/j. 1365-2486.2008.01786.x)
45. Soares-Filho BS, et al. 2012 Forest fragmentation, climate change and understory fire regimes on the Amazonian landscape of the Xingu headwaters. Landscape Ecol. 27, 585-598. (doi:10.1007/s10980-012-9723-6)
46. Balch JK, Nepstad DC, Curran LM, Brando PM, Portela O, Guilherme P, Reuning-Scherer JD, de Carvalho O. 2011 Size, species, and fire characteristics predict tree and liana mortality from experimental burns in the Brazilian Amazon. Forest Ecol. Manag. 261, 68-77. (doi:10.1016/j. foreco.2010.09.029)
47. Brando PM, Nepstad DC, Balch JK, Bolker BC, Christman M, Coe M, Putz FE. 2011 Fireinduced tree mortality in a neotropical forest: the roles of bark traits, tree size, wood density and fire behavior. Glob. Change Biol. 18, 630-641. (doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486. 2011.02533.x)
48. Barlow J, Peres CA. 2008 Fire-mediated dieback and compositional cascade in an Amazonian forest. Phil. Trans. R Soc. B 363, 1779-1785. (doi:10.1098/rstb. 2007.0026)
49. Cochrane MA, Schulze MD. 1999 Fire as a recurrent event in tropical forests of the eastern Amazon: effects on forest structure, biomass, and species composition. Biotropica 31, 2-16.
50. Ray D, Nepstad D, Moutinho P. 2005 Micrometeorological and canopy controls of flammability in mature and disturbed forests in an east-central Amazon landscape. Ecol. Appl. 15, 1664-1678. (doi:10.1890/05-0404)
51. Longo KM, et al. 1999 Correlation between smoke and tropospheric ozone concentration in Cuiabá during SCAR-B. J. Geophys. Res. 104, 12 113-12 129. (doi:10.1029/1999JD900044)
52. 2 flux in Amazonia. Tellus B 59, 338-349. (doi:10.1111/j. 1600-0889.2007.00270.x)
53. Morton DC, Le Page Y, DeFries R, Collatz GJ, Hurtt GC. 2013 Understorey fire frequency and the fate of burned forests in southern Amazonia. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 368, 20120163. (doi:10.1098/rstb. 2012.0163)
54. Anderson LO, Malhi Y, Aragão LEOC, Ladle R, Arai E, Barbier N, Phillips O. Remote sensing detection of droughts in Amazonian forest canopies. New Phytol. 2010, 187, 733-750. (doi:10.1111/j.1469-8137. 2010.03355.x)
55. Aragão LEO, Shimabukuro YE. 2010 The incidence of fire in Amazonian forests with implications for REDD. Science 328, 1275-1278. (doi:10.1126/ science.1186925)
56. INPE Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais. 2012 Program for the estimation of Amazon deforestation (Projeto PRODES Digital). Brazilian National Agency for Space Research. See http:// www.dpi.inpe.br/prodesdigital/prodes.php (accessed 1 October 2012).
57. Sampaio G, Nobre C, Costa MH, Satyamurty P, Soares-Filho BS, Cardoso M. 2007 Regional climate change over eastern Amazonia caused by pasture and soybean cropland expansion. Geophys. Res. Lett. 34. (doi:10.1029/2007GL030612)
58. Metzger JP. 2010 O código florestal tem base científica?. Natureza Conservação 8, 1-5. (doi:10. 4322/natcon.00801000)
59. Nepstad DC, Boyd W, Stickler CM, Bezerra T, Azevedo AA. 2013 Responding to climate change and the global land crisis: REDD+, market transformation and lowemissions rural development. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 368, 20120167. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2012.0167)
60. Moutinho P, Stella Martins O, Christovam M, Lima A, Nepstad D, Crisostomo AC. 2011 The emerging REDD+ regime of Brazil. Carbon Manag. 2, 587-602. (doi:10.4155/cmt.11.46)
61. Malhi Y, Marthews TR. 2013 Tropical forests: carbon, climate and biodiversity. In Law, tropical forests and carbon: the case of REDD+ (eds R Lyster, C MacKenzie, C McDermott), pp. 26-43. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
62. Stickler CM, Nepstad DC, Coe MT, McGrath DG, Rodrigues HO, Walker WS, Soares-Filho BS, Davidson EA. 2009 The potential ecological costs and cobenefits of REDD: a critical review and case study from the Amazon region. Glob. Change Biol. 15, 2803-2824. (doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2009.02109.x)
63. Anderson-Teixeira KJ, Snyder PK, Twine TE, Cuadra SV, Costa MH, DeLucia EH. 2012 Climate-regulation services of natural and agricultural ecoregions of the Americas. Nat. Clim. Change 2, 177-1781. (doi:10. 1038/nclimate1346)
64. Carter JC. 2012 Fire-Fighters transform Mato-Grosso landscape. Brazil: USAID. See http://brazil.usaid.gov/ en/node/1297. See http://transition.usaid.gov/press/ frontlines/fl_sep10/p07_brazil100916.html.
65. Aliança da Terra. 2004 Producing Right Since 2004. See http://aliancadaterra.org.br/noticias/categoria/ brigada-de-incendio/2012.
66. Miller SD, Goulden ML, Hutyra LR, Keller M, Saleska SR, Wofsy SC, Figueira AMS, da Rocha HR, de Camargo PB. 2011 Reduced impact logging minimally alters tropical rainforest carbon and energy exchange. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 108, 19 431-19 435. (doi:10.1073/pnas. 1105068108)
67. Pereira Jr RJ, Zweede J, Asner GP, Keller M. 2002 Forest canopy damage and recovery in reducedimpact and conventional selective logging in eastern Para, Brazil. Forest Ecol. Manag. 168, 77-89. (doi:10.1016/S0378-1127(01)00732-0)
68. Uhl C, Kauffman JB. 1990 Deforestation, fire susceptibility and potential tree responses to fire in the eastern Amazon. Ecology 71, 437-449. (doi:10. 2307/1940299)
69. Huntingford C, et al. 2008 Towards quantifying uncertainty in predictions of Amazon 'dieback'. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 363, 1857-1864. (doi:10.1098/rstb. 2007.0028)
70. Doughty CE. 2011 An in situ leaf and branch warming experiment in the Amazon. Biotropica 43, 658-665. (doi:10.1111/j.1744-7429.2010.00746.x)
71. Atkin OK, Atkinson LJ, Fisher RA, Campbell CD, Zaragoza-Castells J, Pitchford JW, Woodward FI, Hurry V. 2008 Using temperature-dependent changes in leaf scaling relationships to quantitatively account for thermal acclimation of respiration in a coupled global climate-vegetation model. Glob. Change Biol. 14, 2709-2726. (doi:10. 1111/j.1365-2486.2008.01664.x)
72. Feeley KJ, Malhi Y, Zelazowski P, Silman MR. 2012 The relative importance of deforestation, precipitation change, and temperature sensitivity in determining the future distributions and diversity of Amazonian plant species. Glob. Change Biol. 18, 2636-2647. (doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2012.02719.x)
73. Marthews TR, et al. 2012 Simulating forest productivity along a neotropical elevational transect: temperature variation and carbon use efficiency. Glob. Change Biol. 18, 2882-2898. (doi:10.1111/j. 1365-2486.2012.02728.x)
74. Booth BB, et al. 2012 High sensitivity of future global warming to land carbon cycle processes. Environ. Res. Lett. 7, 024002. (doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/2/024002)
75. 2] and forest vegetation: more a water issue than a carbon issue? Funct. Plant Biol. 37, 694-702. (doi:10.1071/FP10001)
76. 2 enrichment in a Florida scrub-oak ecosystem. Glob. Change Biol. 14, 356-367. (doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2008.01740.x)
77. 2 fertilization and seasonality. Glob. Biogeochem. Cycles 23. (doi:10. 1029/2008gb003357)
78. Rammig A, et al. 2010 Estimating the risk of Amazonian forest dieback. New Phytol. 187, 694-706. (doi:10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010. 03318.x)
79. Aragão LEO, et al. 2009 Above-and belowground net primary productivity across ten Amazonian forests on contrasting soils. Biogeosciences 6, 2759-2778. (doi:10.5194/ bg-6-2759-2009)
80. Centro de Sensoriamento Remoto CSR/Ibama. 2012 Cerrado, Projeto de Monitoramento do Desmatamento dos Biomas Brasileiros por Satelite. Monitoramento do Cerrado. See http://siscom.ibama.gov.br/monitorabiomas/ cerrado/index.htm.