TY - JOUR
T1 - Fire, environmental and anthropogenic controls on pantropical tree cover
AU - Kelley, Douglas I.
AU - Gerard, France
AU - Dong, Ning
AU - Burton, Chantelle
AU - Argles, Arthur
AU - Li, Guangqi
AU - Whitley, Rhys
AU - Marthews, Toby R.
AU - Roberston, Eddy
AU - Weedon, Graham P.
AU - Lasslop, Gitta
AU - Ellis, Richard J.
AU - Bistinas, Ioannis
AU - Veenendaal, Elmar
PY - 2024/11/18
Y1 - 2024/11/18
N2 - Explaining tropical tree cover distribution in areas of intermediate rainfall is challenging, with fire’s role in limiting tree cover particularly controversial. We use a novel Bayesian approach to provide observational constraints on the strength of the influence of humans, fire, rainfall seasonality, heat stress, and wind throw on tropical tree cover. Rainfall has the largest relative impact on tree cover (11.6–39.6%), followed by direct human pressures (29.8–36.8%), heat stress (10.5–23.3%) and rainfall seasonality (6.3–22.8%). Fire has a smaller impact (0.2–3.2%) than other stresses, increasing to 0.3–5.2% when excluding human influence. However, we found a potential vulnerability of eastern Amazon and Indonesian forests to fire, with up to 2% forest loss for a 1% increase in burnt area. Our results suggest that vegetation models should focus on fire development for emerging fire regimes in tropical forests and revisit the linkages between rainfall, non-fire disturbances, land use and broad-scale vegetation distributions.
AB - Explaining tropical tree cover distribution in areas of intermediate rainfall is challenging, with fire’s role in limiting tree cover particularly controversial. We use a novel Bayesian approach to provide observational constraints on the strength of the influence of humans, fire, rainfall seasonality, heat stress, and wind throw on tropical tree cover. Rainfall has the largest relative impact on tree cover (11.6–39.6%), followed by direct human pressures (29.8–36.8%), heat stress (10.5–23.3%) and rainfall seasonality (6.3–22.8%). Fire has a smaller impact (0.2–3.2%) than other stresses, increasing to 0.3–5.2% when excluding human influence. However, we found a potential vulnerability of eastern Amazon and Indonesian forests to fire, with up to 2% forest loss for a 1% increase in burnt area. Our results suggest that vegetation models should focus on fire development for emerging fire regimes in tropical forests and revisit the linkages between rainfall, non-fire disturbances, land use and broad-scale vegetation distributions.
U2 - 10.1038/s43247-024-01869-8
DO - 10.1038/s43247-024-01869-8
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85209543610
SN - 2662-4435
VL - 5
JO - Communications Earth and Environment
JF - Communications Earth and Environment
M1 - 714
ER -