Damage to living trees contributes to almost half of the biomass losses in tropical forests

Zuleta, Daniel; Arellano, Gabriel; McMahon, Sean M.; Aguilar, Salomón; Bunyavejchewin, Sarayudh; Castaño, Nicolas; Chang‐Yang, Chia‐Hao; Duque, Alvaro; Mitre, David; Nasardin, Musalmah; Pérez, Rolando; Sun, I‐Fang; Yao, Tze Leong; Valencia, Renato; Krishna Moorthy Parvathi, Sruthi; Verbeeck, Hans; Davies, Stuart J.

Damage to living trees contributes to almost half of the biomass losses in tropical forests

Daniel Zuleta, Gabriel Arellano, Sean M. McMahon, Salomón Aguilar, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin, Nicolas Castaño, Chia‐Hao Chang‐Yang, Alvaro Duque, David Mitre, Musalmah Nasardin, et al.

(2023) GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY. 29(12). p.3409-3420

Author

Daniel Zuleta, Gabriel Arellano, Sean M. McMahon, Salomón Aguilar, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin, Nicolas Castaño, Chia‐Hao Chang‐Yang, Alvaro Duque, David Mitre, Musalmah Nasardin, Rolando Pérez, I‐Fang Sun, Tze Leong Yao, Renato Valencia, Sruthi Krishna Moorthy Parvathi (UGent) , Hans Verbeeck (UGent) and Stuart J. Davies

Organization

Department of Environment

Project

TREECLIMBERS (Modelling lianas as key drivers of tropical forest responses to climate change)
There’s no such thing as “The Tropical Rainforest”: incorporating heterogeneity of tropical forests in a global vegetation model

Abstract

Accurate estimates of forest biomass stocks and fluxes are needed to quantify global carbon budgets and assess the response of forests to climate change. However, most forest inventories consider tree mortality as the only aboveground biomass (AGB) loss without accounting for losses via damage to living trees: branchfall, trunk breakage, and wood decay. Here, we use similar to 151,000 annual records of tree survival and structural completeness to compare AGB loss via damage to living trees to total AGB loss (mortality + damage) in seven tropical forests widely distributed across environmental conditions. We find that 42% (3.62 Mg ha(-1) year(-1); 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.36-5.25) of total AGB loss (8.72 Mg ha(-1) year(-1); CI 5.57-12.86) is due to damage to living trees. Total AGB loss was highly variable among forests, but these differences were mainly caused by site variability in damage-related AGB losses rather than by mortality-related AGB losses. We show that conventional forest inventories overestimate stand-level AGB stocks by 4% (1%-17% range across forests) because assume structurally complete trees, underestimate total AGB loss by 29% (6%-57% range across forests) due to overlooked damage-related AGB losses, and overestimate AGB loss via mortality by 22% (7%-80% range across forests) because of the assumption that trees are undamaged before dying. Our results indicate that forest carbon fluxes are higher than previously thought. Damage on living trees is an underappreciated component of the forest carbon cycle that is likely to become even more important as the frequency and severity of forest disturbances increase.

Keywords

canopy turnover, forest biomass, forest disturbance, ForestGEO, carbon budget, carbon fluxes, terrestrial laser scanning, tree damage, tree mortality, tropical forests

Downloads

Download

Zuleta-etal-inpress-GCB.pdf
- full text (Accepted manuscript)
- |
- open access
- |
- PDF
- |
- 847.84 KB
Download

(...).pdf
- full text (Published version)
- |
- UGent only
- |
- PDF
- |
- 1.60 MB

Citation

Please use this url to cite or link to this publication: http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-01GWHPYSW6SYD5YS0HSM3S4791

MLA: Zuleta, Daniel, et al. “Damage to Living Trees Contributes to Almost Half of the Biomass Losses in Tropical Forests.” GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY, vol. 29, no. 12, 2023, pp. 3409–20, doi:10.1111/gcb.16687.
APA: Zuleta, D., Arellano, G., McMahon, S. M., Aguilar, S., Bunyavejchewin, S., Castaño, N., … Davies, S. J. (2023). Damage to living trees contributes to almost half of the biomass losses in tropical forests. GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY, 29(12), 3409–3420. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16687
Chicago author-date: Zuleta, Daniel, Gabriel Arellano, Sean M. McMahon, Salomón Aguilar, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin, Nicolas Castaño, Chia‐Hao Chang‐Yang, et al. 2023. “Damage to Living Trees Contributes to Almost Half of the Biomass Losses in Tropical Forests.” GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY 29 (12): 3409–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16687.
Chicago author-date (all authors): Zuleta, Daniel, Gabriel Arellano, Sean M. McMahon, Salomón Aguilar, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin, Nicolas Castaño, Chia‐Hao Chang‐Yang, Alvaro Duque, David Mitre, Musalmah Nasardin, Rolando Pérez, I‐Fang Sun, Tze Leong Yao, Renato Valencia, Sruthi Krishna Moorthy Parvathi, Hans Verbeeck, and Stuart J. Davies. 2023. “Damage to Living Trees Contributes to Almost Half of the Biomass Losses in Tropical Forests.” GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY 29 (12): 3409–3420. doi:10.1111/gcb.16687.
Vancouver: 1.
Zuleta D, Arellano G, McMahon SM, Aguilar S, Bunyavejchewin S, Castaño N, et al. Damage to living trees contributes to almost half of the biomass losses in tropical forests. GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY. 2023;29(12):3409–20.
IEEE: [1]
D. Zuleta et al., “Damage to living trees contributes to almost half of the biomass losses in tropical forests,” GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY, vol. 29, no. 12, pp. 3409–3420, 2023.

@article{01GWHPYSW6SYD5YS0HSM3S4791,
  abstract     = {{Accurate estimates of forest biomass stocks and fluxes are needed to quantify global carbon budgets and assess the response of forests to climate change. However, most forest inventories consider tree mortality as the only aboveground biomass (AGB) loss without accounting for losses via damage to living trees: branchfall, trunk breakage, and wood decay. Here, we use similar to 151,000 annual records of tree survival and structural completeness to compare AGB loss via damage to living trees to total AGB loss (mortality + damage) in seven tropical forests widely distributed across environmental conditions. We find that 42% (3.62 Mg ha(-1) year(-1); 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.36-5.25) of total AGB loss (8.72 Mg ha(-1) year(-1); CI 5.57-12.86) is due to damage to living trees. Total AGB loss was highly variable among forests, but these differences were mainly caused by site variability in damage-related AGB losses rather than by mortality-related AGB losses. We show that conventional forest inventories overestimate stand-level AGB stocks by 4% (1%-17% range across forests) because assume structurally complete trees, underestimate total AGB loss by 29% (6%-57% range across forests) due to overlooked damage-related AGB losses, and overestimate AGB loss via mortality by 22% (7%-80% range across forests) because of the assumption that trees are undamaged before dying. Our results indicate that forest carbon fluxes are higher than previously thought. Damage on living trees is an underappreciated component of the forest carbon cycle that is likely to become even more important as the frequency and severity of forest disturbances increase.}},
  author       = {{Zuleta, Daniel and Arellano, Gabriel and McMahon, Sean M. and Aguilar, Salomón and Bunyavejchewin, Sarayudh and Castaño, Nicolas and Chang‐Yang, Chia‐Hao and Duque, Alvaro and Mitre, David and Nasardin, Musalmah and Pérez, Rolando and Sun, I‐Fang and Yao, Tze Leong and Valencia, Renato and Krishna Moorthy Parvathi, Sruthi and Verbeeck, Hans and Davies, Stuart J.}},
  issn         = {{1354-1013}},
  journal      = {{GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY}},
  keywords     = {{canopy turnover,forest biomass,forest disturbance,ForestGEO,carbon budget,carbon fluxes,terrestrial laser scanning,tree damage,tree mortality,tropical forests}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{12}},
  pages        = {{3409--3420}},
  title        = {{Damage to living trees contributes to almost half of the biomass losses in tropical forests}},
  url          = {{http://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16687}},
  volume       = {{29}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}

Altmetric: View in Altmetric
Web of Science: Times cited:

Academic Bibliography

Damage to living trees contributes to almost half of the biomass losses in tropical forests

Downloads

Citation

Contents

Support

Contact