Long-term drought effects on the thermal sensitivity of Amazon forest trees.

The continued functioning of tropical forests under climate change depends on their resilience to drought and heat. However, there is little understanding of how tropical forests will respond to combinations of these stresses, and no field studies to date have explicitly evaluated whether sustained drought alters sensitivity to temperature. We measured the temperature response of net photosynthesis, foliar respiration and the maximum quantum efficiency of photosystem II (Fv /Fm ) of eight hyper-dominant Amazonian tree species at the world's longest-running tropical forest drought experiment, to investigate the effect of drought on forest thermal sensitivity. Despite a 0.6°C-2°C increase in canopy air temperatures following long-term drought, no change in overall thermal sensitivity of net photosynthesis or respiration was observed. However, photosystem II tolerance to extreme-heat damage (T50 ) was reduced from 50.0 ± 0.3°C to 48.5 ± 0.3°C under drought. Our results suggest that long-term reductions in precipitation, as projected across much of Amazonia by climate models, are unlikely to greatly alter the response of tropical forests to rising mean temperatures but may increase the risk of leaf thermal damage during heatwaves.

Major shifts in Amazon wildlife populations from recent intensification of floods and drought.

In the western Amazon Basin, recent intensification of river-level cycles has increased flooding during the wet seasons and decreased precipitation during the dry season. Greater than normal floods occurred in 2009 and in all years from 2011 to 2015 during high-water seasons, and a drought occurred during the 2010 low-water season. During these years, we surveyed populations of terrestrial, arboreal, and aquatic wildlife in a seasonally flooded Amazonian forest in the Loreto region of Peru (99,780 km2 ) to study the effects of intensification of natural climatic fluctuations on wildlife populations and in turn effects on resource use by local people. Shifts in fish and terrestrial mammal populations occurred during consecutive years of high floods and the drought of 2010. As floods intensified, terrestrial mammal populations decreased by 95%. Fish, waterfowl, and otter (Pteronura brasiliensis) abundances increased during years of intensive floods, whereas river dolphin and caiman populations had stable abundances. Arboreal species, including, macaws, game birds, primates, felids, and other arboreal mammals had stable populations and were not affected directly by high floods. The drought of 2010 had the opposite effect: fish, waterfowl, and dolphin populations decreased, and populations of terrestrial and arboreal species remained stable. Ungulates and large rodents are important sources of food and income for local people, and large declines in these animals has shifted resource use of people living in the flooded forests away from hunting to a greater reliance on fish.

Leaf thermotolerance of Hevea brasiliensis clones: intra- versus interclonal variation and relationships with other functional traits.

Land surface temperature is predicted to increase by 0.2 °C per decade due to climate change, although with considerable regional variability, and heatwaves are predicted to increase markedly in the future. These changes will affect where crops can be grown in the future. Understanding the thermal limits of plant physiological functioning and how flexible such limits are is thus important. Here, we report on the measurements of a core foliar thermotolerance trait, T50, defined as the temperature at which the maximum quantum yield (Fv/Fm) of photosystem II declines by 50%, across nine different Malaysian Hevea brasiliensis clones. We explore the relative importance of interclonal versus intraclonal variation in T50 as well as its association with leaf and hydraulic traits. We find very low variation in T50 within individual clones (mean intraclonal coefficient of variation (CoV) of 1.26%) and little variation across clones (interclonal CoV of 2.1%). The interclonal variation in T50 was lower than for all other functional traits considered. The T50 was negatively related to leaf mass per area and leaf dry matter content, but it was not related to hydraulic traits such as embolism resistance (P50) or hydraulic safety margins (HSM50). The range of T50 observed (42.9-46.2 °C) is well above the current maximum air temperatures Tmax,obs (T50 - Tmax,obs >5.8 °C), suggesting that H. brasiliensis is likely thermally safe in this south-east Asian region of Malaysia.

A novel in situ passive heating method for evaluating whole-tree responses to daytime warming in remote environments.

BACKGROUND: Many significant ecosystems, including important non-forest woody ecosystems such as the Cerrado (Brazilian savannah), are under threat from climate change, yet our understanding of how increasing temperatures will impact native vegetation remains limited. Temperature manipulation experiments are important tools for investigating such impacts, but are often constrained by access to power supply and limited to low-stature species, juvenile individuals, or heating of target organs, perhaps not fully revealing how entire or mature individuals and ecosystems will react to higher temperatures. RESULTS: We present a novel, modified open top chamber design for in situ passive heating of whole individuals up to 2.5 m tall (but easily expandable) in remote field environments with strong solar irradiance. We built multiple whole-tree heating structures (WTHSs) in an area of Cerrado around native woody species Davilla elliptica and Erythroxylum suberosum to test the design and its effects on air temperature and humidity, while also studying the physiological responses of E. suberosum to short-term heating. The WTHSs raised internal air temperature by approximately 2.5 °C above ambient during the daytime. This increased to 3.4 °C between 09:00 and 17:00 local time when thermal impact was greatest, and during which time mean internal temperatures corresponded closely with maximum ambient temperatures. Heating was consistent over time and across WTHSs of variable size and shape, and they had minimal effect on humidity. E. suberosum showed no detectable response of photosynthesis or respiration to short-term experimental heating, but some indication of acclimation to natural temperature changes. CONCLUSIONS: Our WTHSs produced a consistent and reproducible level of daytime heating in line with mid-range climate predictions for the Cerrado biome by the end of the century. The whole-tree in situ passive heating design is flexible, low-cost, simple to build using commonly available materials, and minimises negative impacts associated with passive chambers. It could be employed to investigate the high temperature responses of many understudied species in a range of complex non-forest environments with sufficient solar irradiance, providing new and important insights into the possible impacts of our changing climate.