Tropical Forests and Global Atmospheric Change

About this book

First synthesis of the potential sensitivity of tropical forests to global climate change, by leading scientists active in this field.

From the publisher's announcement:

Tropical forests represent the world's most biodiverse ecosystems and play a key role in hydrology, carbon storage and exchange. Many of the human-induced pressures these regions are facing, e.g. fragmentation and deforestation, have been widely reported and well documented. However, there have been surprisingly few efforts to synthesize cutting-edge science in the area of tropical forest interaction with atmospheric change. At a time when our global atmosphere is undergoing a period of rapid change, both in terms of climate and in the cycling of essential elements such as carbon and nitrogen, a thorough and up-to-date analysis is now timely. This research level text, suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers in plant ecology, tropical forestry, climate change science, and conservation biology, explores the vigorous contemporary debate as to how rapidly tropical forests may be affected by atmospheric change, and what this may mean for their future.

Contents

Foreword Contemporary atmospheric change in the tropics 1 Yadvinder Malhi and James Wright: Spatial patterns and recent trends in the climate of tropical rainforest regions 2 Wolfgang Cramer, Alberte Bondeau, Sibyll Schaphoff, Wolfgang Lucht, Ben Smith and Stephen Sitch: Impacts of future CO2 increase, climate change and deforestation on tropical forests 3 William F. Laurance: Forest-climate interactions in fragmented tropical landscapes Atmospheric change and ecosystem processes 4 Simon L. Lewis, Yadvinder Malhi and Oliver L. Phillips: Predicting the impacts of global environmental changes on tropical forests 5 Jeffrey Q. Chambers and Whendee L. Silver: Tropical forests and atmospheric change: a summary of ecophysiological and biogeochemical responses 6 Christian K#rner: Through enhanced tree dynamics, CO2 enrichment may cause tropical forests to lose carbon 7 Patrick Meir and John Grace: The response by tropical forest ecosystems to drought Observations of contemporary change in tropical forests 8 Jos Barlow and Carlos A. Peres: Ecological responses to El Ni#o-induced surface fires in central Brazilian Amazonia: management implications for flammable tropical forests 9 William F. Laurance, Alexandre A. Oliveira, Susan G. Laurance, Richard Condit, Henrique E. M. Nascimento, Ana Andrade, Christopher W. Dick, Ana C. Sanchez-Thorin, Thomas E. Lovejoy, Jose E. L. S. Ribeiro: Pervasive alteration of tree communities in undisturbed Amazonian forests: effects of global change? 10 O. Phillips, T. Baker, L. Arroyo, N. Higuchi, T. Killeen, W.F. Laurance, S.L. Lewis, J. Lloyd, Y. Malhi, A. Monteagudo, D. Neill, P. Nunez Vargas, N. Silva, J. Terborgh, R. Vasquez Martnez, M. Alexiades, S. Almeida, S. Brown, J. Chave, J.A. Comiskey, C.I. Czimczik, A. Di Fiore, T. Erwin, C. Kuebler, S.G. Laurance, H.E.M. Nascimento, J. Olivier, W. Palacios, S.Patino N. Pitman, C.A. Quesada, M. Saldias, A. Torres Lezama and B. Vinceti: Amazon tree turnover in the late twentieth century 11 Timothy R. Baker, Oliver L. Phillips, Yadvinder Malhi, Samuel Almeida, Luzmila Arroyo, Anthony Di Fiore, Terry Erwin, Niro Higuchi, Timothy J. Killeen, Susan G. Laurance, William F. Laurance, Simon L. Lewis, Abel Monteagudo, David A. Neill, Percy Nunez Vargas, Nigel C.A. Pitman, J. Natalino M. Silva, Rodolfo Vasquez Martines: Increasing biomass in Amazonian forest plots 12 S. L. Lewis, O. L. Phillips, T. R. Baker, J. Lloyd, Y. Malhi, S. Almeida, N. Higuchi, W. F. Laurance, D. A. Neill, J. N. M. Silva, J. Terborgh, A. Torres Lezama, R. Vaszquez Martinez S. Brown, J. Chave, C. Kuebler, P. Nunez Vargas and B. Vinceti: Are concerted, widespread, directional changes occurring in the structure and dynamics of South American tropical forests? 13 Jerome Chave, Guillem Chust, Richard Condit, Salomon Aguilar, Andres Hernandez, Suzanne Lao, Rolando Perez: Error propagation and scaling for tropical forest biomass estimates The past and future of tropical forests 14 Mark Maslin: The longevity and resilience of the Amazon Rainforest 15 Francis E. Mayle and Mark B. Bush: Responses of Amazonian ecosystems to climatic and atmospheric CO2 changes since the Last Glacial Maximum 16 Sharon A. Cowling, Richard A. Betts, Peter M. Cox, Virginia J. Ettwein, Chris D. Jones, Mark A. Maslin and Steven A. Spall: Modelling the past and future fate of the Amazonian Forest 17 R. Toby Pennington, Matt Lavin, Dari A.rs P tadanr seasonally dry forest plants Synthesis. Oliver Phillips and Yadvinder Malhi

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