Exploring the likelihood and mechanism of a climate-change-induced dieback of the Amazon rainforest

By Yadvinder S. Malhi, L. Aragão, D. Galbraith, Christopher Huntingford, R. Fisher, Przemyslaw Zelazowski, Stephen Sitch, C. McSweeney, Patrick Meir. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009

945 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4ee0ec1e47aa74424a0a090f73b8603d776cb6ce

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Citations in the corpus

Combined effects of climate and land‐use change on the future of humid tropical forests (2010, background): “Although this consistency suggests that these spatial patterns are robust, we note that variation among the 16 GCMs represents only a subset of uncertainty in projected climate impacts, which also includes emission levels and species responses to climate.”
The potential ecological costs and cobenefits of REDD: a critical review and case study from the Amazon region (2009, background): “…induced by large-scale deforestation, could produce a new climate equilibrium in many locations in the tropics that is out of balance with the current forest distribution (Malhi et al., 2009) and therefore threaten the existence of tropical forests in general, including those in protected areas.”
Fire management for biodiversity conservation: Key research questions and our capacity to answer them (2010, background): “Moreover, fire regimes are likely to undergo further changes, with larger or more frequent fires a probable outcome of climate change in many parts of the world (Cochrane and Barber, 2009; Flannigan et al., 2009; Malhi et al., 2009; McKenzie et al., 2004; Pitman et al., 2007; Simmons et al., 2004).”
Slowing Amazon deforestation through public policy and interventions in beef and soy supply chains (2014, background): “H1: Risk: Losing access to markets or credit X (7, 60) X (7) X (46) X (19, 57) X (59)”
The role of forest genetic resources in responding to biotic and abiotic factors in the context of anthropogenic climate change (2014, background): “Malhi et al. (2009), for example, examined the evidence for anthropogenic climate change leading to future large-scale ‘‘dieback’’ in Amazonian rainforest.”
Increasing human dominance of tropical forests (2015, background): “By contrast, climate envelope-type approaches show a decreasing けミキIエW ゲヮ;IWげ for tropical forests, but do not include the direct influence of CO2 on photosynthesis and water-use efficiency (75).”
Neotropical Plant Evolution: Assembling the Big Picture (2013, background): “B) can grow where annual rainfall is c. 1500 mm or greater, but what is critical is the lack of extreme seasonality of rainfall (Malhi et al., 2009; who provide a detailed discussion of the effects of seasonality in rain forest – savanna/SDTF transition zones).”
The Amazon basin in transition (2012, background): “Regional climate change The IPCC fourth assessment climate change model runs show the highest probability of significant precipitation decrease predicted for southeastern Amazonia, where deforestation is greatest and where the climate and ecosystems transition from short-dry-season rainforest to ”
Drought tolerance as predicted by leaf water potential at turgor loss point varies strongly across species within an Amazonian forest (2015, neutral): “This critically discussed ‘Amazonian dieback’ scenario predicts significant increases in mortality rates for Amazonian trees, leading to a catastrophic transition into a savanna-type vegetation (Malhi et al. 2009; Good et al. 2013; Huntingford et al. 2013).”
Upslope migration of Andean trees (2011, neutral): “…region and is markedly slower than the >9 m year)1 migration that will be required to remain in equilibrium with climate if temperatures increase by >5 C over the next century as generally predicted under high-range greenhouse gas emissions scenarios (Malhi et al., 2009; Urrutia & Vuille, 2009).”
The relative importance of deforestation, precipitation change, and temperature sensitivity in determining the future distributions and diversity of Amazonian plant species (2012, methodology): “We extracted estimates of mean annual temperatures (hereafter referred to as temperature), and used extracted monthly precipitation estimates to calculate the Maximum Climatological Water Deficit (MCWD; Malhi et al., 2009).”
Invasive grasses: A new perfect storm for forested ecosystems? (2020, background): “Therefore, there is increased potential for rapid landscape change driven by large patches of early successional plant communities that can dominate post-disturbance landscapes (Mallek et al., 2013; Hessburg et al., 2015).”
Global change effects on humid tropical forests: Evidence for biogeochemical and biodiversity shifts at an ecosystem scale (2016, background): “The transition from forest to savanna generally occurs via effects of fire, which are more frequent with drought [Hoffmann et al., 2012; Malhi et al., 2009; Murphy and Bowman, 2012].”